#717: Noah Kagan — How to Launch a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend

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3:44 A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal mental cellar. No Kagan. Tim Ferris. It's been a minute. Nice to see ya. Great to see you. Our last

4:02 Rodeo. From an audio perspective. Was ages ago. Number seventy five. On the podcast now close to seven hundred episodes. Wow.

4:11 Yeah. And at that time it was how Facebook's number thirty employee quickly built four businesses and gained forty pounds with weight training. I feel like my headlines have deteriorated over time. They've become Very sort of pedantic and pedestrian and and descriptive. That is better copy. So I need to I need to work on that copy. Maybe you drafted that copy yourself, actually. For all I know, that could have been the case. We have a lot to talk about.

4:37 But for people who don't have any context. Could you give a little self intro? Great to see you first off. Yeah, great to see you. Now we're at eight million dollar businesses, which is pretty amazing. I was number thirty at Facebook, number four at Mint.com. I was a cubicle monkey at Intel for a very brief moment, which sucked, which led me to this entrepreneurship journey. And then I've started so many different businesses that failed.

4:58 Some worked and now I help run AppSuma.com, number one side online for software, to do about eighty million dollars a year. Which is unreal. It started bootstrapped in a weekend. I couldn't believe it when I saw that. I can't believe it. I remember I remember day one. Of App Sumo, effectively. Back in the day. It's been crazy, and you were a big help with it. You're super good help with getting it going. So thank you. You're welcome. Um, YouTube channel's done pretty well, million subs, got a book, million dollar weekend coming out to help people Very similar complimentary to for our work week. Mm-hmm.

5:25 And we're here today. So let's let's do a little Trip down memory lane because Ages ago. Two thousand eleven.

5:34 So this is Going back away is we've known each other a long time. I remember we first met, I want to say at a coffee shop In Mountain View, California. Yes. On Castro. I remember that. And

5:47 A lot has transpired since. We're gonna cover quite a bit of it and get into a lot of tactics in this conversation. Noah always is able to deliver specifics Concrete recommended actions. Scripts, you name it. So we're gonna get into all that juicy stuff. But you had a guest blog post on my blog in two thousand eleven.

6:07 And it's easy for me to forget. It's easy for some people to forget or just not realize that The blog for me was really the connective tissue that permitted everything else. Including the first book, because the blog came out before the book. And

6:22 What was that blog post? That you put together. How to create a million dollar business in a weekend featuring Chihuahuas. And that uh that started this book. Yeah. That started a lot of me sharing my approach. Yeah.

6:38 And that was wild. And it resonated incredibly well. funny sidebar also if You're curious about some of the ingredients in the cocktail that contributed to Ryan Holliday becoming

6:51 The face of modern stoicism. Way back in the day. I think it was called Stoicism one oh one on the blog. Yeah. So people can take a look at Tim Dowblog for that. But let's start with a completely oblique question. Which is a geographic question. So

7:07 We're sitting here in Austin, Texas, and before we started recording. You said something along the lines. Uh Barcelona is the new Austin. Uh.

7:17 Can you expand on this? You know, in our last show, which was you were talking like, Hey, you're in Austin, I'm living you were living in San Francisco, you know, tell me about it and you're like, Yeah, I thought about it. And now we're here living in Austin. Now we're here. And I do think of my my life I've been able to pick things a little ear. Facebook a little early mint a little early Social games a little early.

7:34 group on kind of appsuma.com early, SAS businesses early. And so even choosing Austin early. And super early. When did you get to Austin? Fourteen years ago. Fourteen. Yeah, which people were like, What are you doing out there? And I was like, I don't even know where it is in Texas, but it's great. And uh you know, for me six years ago, my buddies Dan and Ian from Tropical MBA They're like Come out to Barcelona for a month and I got there and I was like, That's okay. And I was like, it's very hot here in Austin.

8:00 So I was like All right, I'll go out there and after a few weeks I'm really into cycling. I mean to the spandex, but really the cycling out there was just it's world class. It's where Lance Armstrong got famous. Like it's what he made famous, actually. In a city called Girona. So I got out there and we started training.

8:14 Start drinking at night, start eating. The prices are amazing. There's a beach right there. It's basically California without all the bullshit. And a lot cheaper. That's a good sales pitch. Yeah. Yeah. People like want to go to California like no thank you. I do love California. It's definitely one of my homes. And so I just started going there every single summer.

8:32 And now this year I spent a hundred and forty three days. And it's just amazing. And then what's even wild is my girlfriend who I met there And now she's pregnant, which is insane. She was saying that the life expectancy Of Spaniards is actually higher.

8:45 I believe that. I was talking to her about this and that's kinda interesting. It's like, Well, wouldn't you want to live where people live longer? Like, Yeah. So you have fresher food. Everything is walkable. So you're like going downstairs, you're like, Well, I'm gonna go get a tomato and there's a vegetable store.

8:59 And then there's a meat store and a cheese store. You have community there. We're here, where she comes, she lives in my house here. We live out in the West. She's like, Do you see anyone ever? Do you ever talk to anyone? She's like, Where where is everyone? And so

9:09 All these factors combined, plus the the cost of living is cheaper. It's just been where now we're spending at least half a year out there. A lot more social fabric too, I would imagine, right? I haven't experienced Barcelona much. I've spent a little bit of time there. Great tango scene for people who may be interested. But in Madrid, where I spent a bit more time People are out, they're socializing, groups of friends, families, you just see more cohesion and at least it seems maybe technology has changed this. And people are more ready player one now in Spain. It's possible. It's true most places. But less Self imposed isolation.

9:44 Then I observe In the US, normally. Less isolation, better looking people. Straight up. It's got a higher density of really gorgeous people. Yeah. And I wostin' a pretty attractive town. It's okay. Depends on what you're looking for. It depends, yeah. But it's just you know, for cycling, it's world class. The all the I like men with man buns and leg tattoos.

10:04 That's Austin. Okay, it's right, yeah. You're the right place. If you're but like just everything about it has been uh it's been such a blessing to to be able to find that and be able to Live my life there and here. You can do both. So we're gonna Move on to other things. But before we do Barcelona.

10:20 Let's start with a contrast. So Austin, for a host of different reasons, has become a nexus For a few things that I think we could have expected looking back from say five years ago, we could have expected tech, right? Tech was already here. From a taxation perspective, et cetera, it made a lot of sense. Covet accelerated all of that. So you've seen an explosion of tech. I mean within striking distance of where we're sitting, there is an entire entire skyscraper, who knows how many floors, forty, fifty floors, that is going to be exclusively Google. And which has not yet been Opened.

10:53 Commercially speaking, right? There are a few retail shops at the bottom. That I think is Somewhat predictable. The things I couldn't have predicted. Or wouldn't have predicted. Austin has become the

11:04 Mecca of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the world, not just in the United States. It is If not already, certainly becoming An epicenter for Comedy, stand up comedy. Mm. In many ways, thanks to Joe Rogan and

11:19 Yeah. What do you think? If anything, you were like, You know what, in the next five to ten years, I bet Barcelona could be hot for X. Is there anything that comes to mind? Because I always looked at Austin as this highly diversified Town that was not dominated by single industry. That's part of what appealed to me.

11:38 Compared to say S F Bay area, right? No. Hasn't quite worked out as I anticipated, but Certain dominant. communities and industries are becoming clear now in Austin. Any thoughts on

11:54 Barcelona? I would say with Austin I'd also add content creators. There's a lot of pretty sizable YouTube podcasts that have become in awesome right in holiday. Me, you. Yep. Definitely a lot of other people that have moved out here. I would say for Barcelona, for me specifically, it's

12:09 I can see it being the remote working capital of the world. Right, where yes, the hours are a little off, so maybe you'd want to go South America, but potentially like just for having a metropolitan city. Especially in Austin. It's hot here. Four months a year. Yeah. To be clear what we mean by hot, sorry Centigrade folks, I don't know how to convert this, but we're talking like one ten to one twenty.

12:27 It's like a lot of the time. Thirty eight to forty Celsius. Your dog cannot walk outside. My dog's feet will literally turn into omelets. Well you're showing your floor is literally burnt in your place from the sun. From the sun. Yeah. The previous owner the previous owner left the solar shades up and the entire floor was bleached by the sun. But yeah, you know, you go to Barcelona I get a co working spot and go to one co work, but there's so many out there. Five hundred bucks a month, you get an awesome desk. You get really, really fast Wi Fi everywhere. You can use UKO.com, U K Io.com. It's like Airbnb, but even cheaper. Super sick apartments. Don't use it yet because I need to book my place. Good luck. Yeah. And then you have like you can go to all these amazing cities in a weekend. So you got like Poochida, which is like better than Lake Tahoe. Bigger mountains, not as crowded.

13:12 You've got Costa Brava, which is California coast, but even better. It's like European style. You have naked beaches. Uh huh. Both genders, so whatever you want. We were going to the wrong beach, depending on how you look at it, for a long time. And my buddy's let's let's go down the beach. All these varietal things that that really make it a nice summer. And I like the balance of having both where there's the intimacy of being here in Austin, where you can go to Uchi. Yeah, people like you and me, and there's a lot of interesting people here. But then also when it's hot in summer. Wow, now with entrepreneurship, now with remote work.

13:41 Barcelona's a great second home for the rest of the year. Tactical question for people listening, and I know this exists in some European countries, is there the equivalent of a digital nomad visa? Or is it Yeah. Something that's more complicated. It's way more complicated than people sound. So I literally got off the the phone immigration lawyer

13:59 for US and Europe yesterday. And this is ties into our entire conversation and I'll c make that connection in a minute, but please continue. So you got off the phone. It's not as easy as it seems. There's basically There's a nomad visa for Spain, right? And To be clear, it's taken me eighteen months and I still don't have it. Wow. And I have a pretty sizable company, I have a pretty sizable bank account. I went to a college, which you have to do.

14:20 And I've used a law firm to follow all these papers and I'm still not there. So sometimes when you're dealing with other countries, and even in America, there's a lot of bureaucracy. So that's one way to do it. That could take a lot of time. Second one is the golden visa. So you spend half a million. In Spain. In Spain on a property. And then you can be able to get a visa there. The other one that we're gonna be approaching the way I'm gonna do it is called the Pareja de Echo. Okay. So if you can meet someone who is actually a citizen

14:43 You don't have to actually be married, you just have to live with them and be with them. You can get your residency there. Mm. So that's what I'm doing with my girlfriend. Ah. So that is one approach. Getting your green card. To be able to get my green card. I'm coming through the border legally over there. But uh otherwise it's it's a three month tourist visa. I think the do my visa It sounds great. It's just a literally eighteen months and I don't know, fifteen hundred bucks, still nothing. Yeah, that's a lift. I mean, in terms of energy commitment. And the reason I wanted to cover this and the reason it ties into everything is that

15:13 I enjoy our conversations. In part because I learn a lot about the latest and greatest of whatever you've experimented with. Personally and professionally. And the personal part is not a small thing, right? Because you can create a business that is a monster of your own making, a jail of your own making. It's very easy. It's very easy to do. That is the default, I would say. And you can also design a business that allows you to do the type of thing.

15:38 That you're describing. And those are fundamentally Different approaches, they seldom happen by accident. So Why don't we hop into

15:48 The million dollar weekend. I can do one more bonus visa thing that everyone can consider. Great bonus visa. This is like a little secret thing that It's actually kinda interesting. A lot of countries, if you can find your genealogy, use twenty three and me Or talk to your grandparents. You can actually get your citizenship through that.

16:03 So my great grandfather is from Poland. So that's been one avenue I've been considering where if you can actually find documents, which we've been able to find some, I can get Poland citizenship. which is then part of the EU citizenship. Yeah. So that is another way of getting in if I didn't have a government for people out there, go look up your ancestry and see if that country will be able to give you a citizenship. Yeah, and different countries have Different degrees of leniency slash acceptance, depending on how far back you go.

16:27 My buddy Dan Andrews always says he's like be mindful of marrying the passport. 'Cause my girlfriend is Venezuelan but lives in Portugal, but we l we're in Spain. So it's just a lot of things now to get her in America has been a nightmare. Real I'm like ridiculously challenging. The people are trying to get across the border down south. I'm like, if that's easier, maybe we'll just do that. I'll put you on my back and carry you. Yeah. Side note If we look at this is a whole separate conversation, but if we look at the Plummeting.

16:55 birth rates, right? We're not meeting replacement rates. for population growth, which is then correlated to GDP growth and so on. And so many industrialized countries, the one advantage the US has really is immigration, attracting talent globally. So making it easy or easier is really mission critical to

17:15 The economic And sort of national security future of the United States. It's also not as easy as people realize. Like I was talking with the lawyer to get her into America, the other the other Visa lawyer. And You know in in ninety day fiance that show, it's like okay, you get a fiance, boom boom, boom. No, it's not like that.

17:31 You have to wait a lot of time, you have to spend a lot of money, you can't leave the country. Either you if you do it in in America, she can't leave for months. Yeah. Or if we do it in Spain, she can't come into America for years. Yeah. It's incredibly tricky, incredibly complicated. So let's Zoom out for a second.

17:47 And we're gonna talk about starting. We're gonna talk about the initial stages and process for building a business or concepting a business in a very short period of time. So we are gonna get to that. And we are gonna have a Challenge slash Competition offer from Noah later that you're not going to want to miss. So stick around for that. I absolve all responsibility. Noah has.

18:11 Has verbally committed to all the indemnities in the world for me. So this is this is Noah's thing. But I want to talk about running App Sumo because prior to doing the homework for this conversation, I had no idea that it had grown so much. Mm.

18:30 It's wild, right? Uh I mean So eighty million A year business. That's bananas.

18:37 And what I'm curious about Is Being the CEO of such a company. Could you give us an idea of what the company looks like, first of all.

18:47 Just in terms of basic org chart, like how many full time employees, how you think about structuring the company. It's been interesting. And one thing, you know, especially for Million Dollar Weekend, which is what I've been able to it's the playbook I used. And It started with just me. In a basement in Hate Ashbury.

19:04 for forty eight bucks. And that's what's crazy to them. Okay, everyone doesn't have to have a lot of money or time to be able to get to this point. And so that is kinda wild. Mm-hmm. There are playbooks for starting low cost, starting low risk. incrementally building something that can become the type of business that you're describing or larger.

19:22 Yeah. Or not, depending on your priorities, right? Exact and for me it's being able to that's why I left SF. I wanted to live. I'm not here just to work all day. Yeah. And that's why I'm in Barcelona. It's like I wanna have a good balance of enjoying life and making money the way I want. And so at Sumo.com today we have about seventy five full time teammates. I think the word employees just kind of

19:38 Archaic. Mm-hmm. And then maybe twenty five full time contractors. And so that's broken out. About six different departments. So we have product engineering department, sales, business development department, marketing department.

19:50 Operations. So we go get the best deals on the planet app, Zumo, negotiate and seeing prices and then we have to get it on the website. So there's a team that helps do that. Customer support team. people team and then a finance and business intelligence team. And are those employees distributed? Do they have locations?

20:09 I think they're real. I guess location. We've gone back and forth over the years, man. Like I started in a basement. I made every move to Austin. And then we got an office here. Now we're remote.

20:21 And we're doing stipends for co working spots for some of the teammates as an experiment to see if we can actually help them either get their home office set up or co working setup. We've tried the office. It didn't seem like people actually go. We have one now. I don't know if people go. I literally have no clue, but we've definitely downsized from about fifty thousand a month. Think our office now is thirty five hundred bucks a month. Mm-hmm. I was gonna ask you about CEO frameworks that you use on an ongoing basis. So we're gonna come back to that. But since you talked about downsizing and I wanna give somebody Who's listening something tactical?

20:51 right away because we wanna front load some of those Scooby snacks to keep everybody listening. You are a very proactive negotiator. And That can range from Asking for a discount on coffee, which I think we should revisit briefly. Yes, dude.

21:08 to the thirty five plan, I believe, that you had for COVID. Think it was Maybe dropping sales goals, assuming a five percent profit margin, something like that. Yeah. And

21:22 I'd like to know how you negotiate things down. Like what are some of the key approaches? So let's say somebody's looking at lease of a space for an office that's not really being used. Or they're looking at their credit card statement and they're trying to tighten the belt because they wanna take some swings at entrepreneurship, but they want to feel a margin of safety, right? How do you approach this. What are some of the keys to that? Because this is something I know you have a lot of practice with. Can't I'm not gonna do Jewish jokes, but uh I I love a good deal. That's absolutely what I got. No, it is Jewish, to be clear

21:57 Okay, a few things of how I like to approach negotiating and and getting better prices on things. First off, this is gonna be counterintuitive, but I always say I'm really bad at negotiating. That's my first line. You say that to the person you're negotiating against, right? Every time. Uh huh. And the idea here is one, I am bad. Because what I'm interested in is like I don't really want to spend a lot of time. I want to understand what you want.

22:17 And if I know that y what you want and you're happy with what you get and it's within my circle. That's it. I don't want to spend so much time actually negotiating. So and I think that lowers people's defenses as well. I'm just not really good at negotiating, I wanna make sure you get what you want. Mm-hmm. And then people like, Oh great, so that's number one. Second thing

22:31 No one really wants to be guilted. I have a Jewish mother, I know about guilt. Right. Th there's a reason Jewish chocolate's called gelt. Right? Like it's not a coincidence. Voilà. The second thing is no one will be guilted into being excited to work with you. And the internet is a small place. The world is a small place. Me and you how long we've been together.

22:49 You started what? Your book two thousand seven? Yeah, the book came out in two thousand seven, started writing in two thousand five, so we met two thousand seven, two thousand eight. Two thousand six, maybe earlier it was before two thousand six. It comes around. Yeah. So when people try to dick you over or people kinda grind you, you're like, Okay. I know. Mm-hmm. I'll see you again. Yeah. Right. And so for me, it's like how do I have a positive experience where

23:08 Do you want to do another deal with Noah? Do you want to do another discount with Noah? And then lastly, I think a lot of times pricing. So one, be positive. Have a good experience because you're probably gonna do this again. Then I say lastly. What's the actual value you're negotiating around? I think a lot of times it's like, Well, I want five versus ten. Why?

23:24 So have clarity about why you think it's that price. Like hey Here's comps, here's something that we can actually base this on. So have something where you're like, okay, I'm paying what we do at AppSumo.com is we do a biannual review over every single contractor and every single software subscription. We don't need software, you literally just have a list on spreadsheets. So twice a year you

23:42 Go through the list every single thing of your sort of recurring costs. Yeah. So our server costs and electronic costs a month, give or take, is two hundred fifty thousand. Contractor teammate cost is somewhere around one and a half million. A month. Mm. So you add that up over a year, it's a lot. So every bi annual Anna who leads our people team is amazing. Goes over that and then we basically have two columns which is

24:02 Price of it. And then we have the return on investment or how valuable we think it is to the company, low, medium, high. And then they literally go through every single one and see if they can contact anything that says low. Mm-hmm. And then just get it cancelled.

24:14 Either get it canceled or get it negotiated down. Anything that's high. We still ask for a discount as well. But we more or less leave those alone. Last tip I'll give for negotiating prices, and again, I I recommend everyone doing a biannual review personally or professionally. When you give the number shut the hell up. I don't know if you've heard this, but this is one of my favorite. I do this all the time. I literally did two days ago. And when you say when you give the number, that's effectively what you're asking for?

24:33 Yeah, so you know, million dollar weekend and you're gonna appeximate.com and in life in general, everything is an ask. And so how I like to do it. I bought a sauna. And they didn't deliver it. For six months.

24:44 And I was a little frustrated, so I did a chargeback. People in Europe don't know about chargebacks, you know this? Americans are like I'll charge you back. Europeans are like, What is what's happening here? So I I charge back and they contacted me. Can you define a chargeback? That's basically you're asking your credit card company to reverse a charge. Yes. Which everyone should do Not all the time. And it happens at Epsomo and we we do our best to rectify what customer thing is wrong. But it's a really nice way

25:07 Of getting a company's attention. Because they get charged for it. They have thirty five dollar bill. And they get notified, like, hey if here's a chargeback, you need to solve this. And so

25:15 I wouldn't do it all the time. I'm that's not something I'm doing right way, but if someone I try to return something or they didn't deliver for six months, I did a chargeback. No, I'll chuck the negotiating card. So the owner of the company three months later, after he notices it, is like, Hey, I got a chargeback, man, like what the hell? And I was like On my integrity, I'm gonna pay for your sauna, but let me just tell you my my experience. We have a chat. This is

25:34 Literally three days ago. He's like, All right, man, he's country, actually. He's like, All right, man, I got you. I'm gonna hook you up a little discount there, Noah. I was like, All right there, Craig. He's like, I'm gonna give you ten percent. I was like Okay. Frag? I was like Craig, you know, let me just

25:47 I think what times when you're negotiating people do like They go back and forth emotionally and it's like get off the emotion and get to the solution. Get the result. Yeah. Get the result instead of being right. A hundred percent. You're like, well

25:59 Craig, you know. Instead of being righteous. Exactly. Hundred percent. And so With Craig, he'd said ten percent and I said, All right, you know, well Craig let me just Let me just walk through what happened.

26:08 You guys charge me thirteen thousand five hundred for my sonnet, which I love. It didn't come for six months, you lied to me every week. I think what's reason they lied to me that was coming every week. I ask every week and they're like oh yeah it's coming this week for six months. Five minutes took it. For those people who've seen Snatch. This is a movie reference. People who get it. Doesn't matter. It's a movie reference that people who get it will get it. Yeah. So the the last negotiating technique and and this is you know a million dollar weekend we talk about how to sell better and there's a a s very simple framework everyone can copy.

26:36 But with Craig, I said all right Craig Let's do twenty percent. This is a power move. You say your ask or your number and you shut up. That's it.

26:45 I don't know if people already do this or know about this, but that is the power move. So the final let the let the silence do the work. Just be like twenty percent. And Craig is like All right, no, you got a deal, let's get it done. And so then we got twenty percent. I was able to get an extra thousand bucks off the sauna. I'm happy, he's happy we can move forward. So that is a lot of how I like to negotiate.

27:02 And if you flash back to earlier days. Smaller company, maybe it's when you're solo. Yeah. Maybe it's what you did before starting App Sumo. This is not a new habit. This is a habit you've developed over A very long period of time. Yeah. And I'm looking at a transcript of an interview from Mixer G, so I'll I'll throw in I know. Going into the archives.

27:23 And Wanted to throw this out there just in case it's helpful to folks or for just jogging other techniques in terms of Tightening the belt, which is something I did also before starting my very first company. the sports nutrition company. I've went through my credit card statements and like, okay, what can I cancel? What can I get rid of? So I feel like I have more of a buffer.

27:44 Right, my burn rate is as low as possible. Here's what we have in front of me. Fact check. Can't trust everything you read on the internet. But Here's what we have. My most important thing is that when you're emailing someone, I think you've got to do a few things. First, tell them the exact price that you want. So you kind of alluded to that. Number two, say, Hey, I can't afford this right now. Number three, say, This is what I need for now. We can revisit in six months if the economy recovers. This is a great way to keep me as a long term customer.

28:08 That's a pretty good line. Right. Any other thoughts on Negotiating prices down. Yeah. When we're out, right? Just deciding what to cut. I think the bigger concept that I reflect on for everyone out there is that you can actually ask for discounts and I don't think people realize that.

28:24 Yeah. I think that's actually the bigger one of the bigger things, not the only biggest thing, which is I went to Al you know Ali Abdul? I do, yeah. I don't know him personally, but I've had a little bit of contact. Oh, he's awesome. He's like uh beautiful person. I love this guy. And I went to hang out with him in LA two weeks ago. Seems like he's done a very good job on a whole bunch of different levels. And he's yeah, and he's kind about it, which I really admire. And

28:46 I go to his hotel room, like dude sick hotel room. Really sick hotel room. It's like literally corner. Santa Monica, facing the beach. Me and Isaac, the the videographer were sharing like a tiny one bedroom, like like cuddling on a bed, like poor people. I was like, dude, not not poor people, but like I I call small rich. That's the new poor. That's my new term, small rich. Cause it means you know, there's still a chance to get rich soon, or yet. So anyways I asked Ali, I was like, How much is this room, man? This must be like a thousand a night.

29:11 He's like, You know what, mate? He's he's in London. He's like, you know what I mean? I just emailed them and said I'm doing videos and stuff in the room. Do you think you can give me a little discount on the room? Be in the room for free. Yeah.

29:22 They give him the room for free just by asking. Doesn't hurt to ask. And so I think the bigger thing is not necessarily how to grind other people, and I don't think that's what we're encouraging at all. It's just thinking like If you can't afford something. If you want something, how can you just ask for it? And I think What Tintin said, what you highlighted from what we were talking about is

29:37 I like the phrase whift. What's in it for them? Just think with like. How can I tell them I'll be a long term customer. That's what you called out, which is great. Or like, hey, I can't afford this, but I can't afford this price. So I could do something now. And thinking about how you make it in their interest. Like maybe I'll leave you a review.

29:51 And thinking more than that instance makes them more likely to do it. So let's give An example of an optional practice. And I know we've talked about this. And

30:01 For any number of reasons. I'm just in love with it. And that is the coffee discount. Because Don't practice Your first round on the important stuff.

30:11 That's ridiculous. Yeah. That's asking for all sorts of problems and and all sorts of like self imposed PTSD if it goes sideways and then you're not gonna do it again. Yeah. So practice on things that don't matter. Right. It's kinda like if you were gonna have a really important job interview with your top pick. Don't make that your first interview. A hundred percent. Just go get a bunch of practice rounds with other companies where you don't care about the outcome. So in this case, what is the coffee discount? Yeah, the coffee discount It ties all into starting a business, which people are like Really? I'm like, Yeah.

30:38 It is the thing. It's you go to any time you buy coffee, tea, anytime you go to a store, even a restaurant. You can do it anywhere. You go up to the counter. You make your purchase and you say, Can I please have ten percent off? And then they look at you really strange. And you say, Well, Noah Kagan and Million Dollar Weekend, I'm doing this course. I'm trying out this book. They said I should do it. And they'll they keep looking at you weird.

30:56 Nego, let me talk to my manager. Okay, fine. You get ten percent off. Or they come back and say no. And you get your coffee and you move on. And then I always love asking people like what did you learn about yourself?

31:06 And everyone's always like I was scared. I had courage'cause I faced my fear. And I realize I can do more things and it's not as scary as it actually seemed. And now you can start applying that, frankly, in everything, in your jobs for raises. With your dating, asking someone for a date.

31:21 And especially in business, which is hey, will you come on my show? Hey, will you be my customer? Hey, will you give me feedback? Hey, can I interview you? That's all this whole life is is asking people things. And if you ask, guess what? You can get. Mm-hmm. I don't know when I originally said this or wrote it, but I've it resonated So much that I was like, huh, maybe I should think about this even more myself, which was this line. Can't believe I'm quoting myself for God's sake. Save me. This is what the internet does to you. I haven't started quoting myself with my name signed. I haven't started doing that yet. But the

31:52 Life Punishes the vag and rewards the specific ask. And this ties into my earliest beginnings prior to the four hour work week. And I don't know if I've actually talked about this publicly, but

32:05 When I was giving the guest lectures in high tech entrepreneurship at Princeton twice a year, from two thousand three to thirteen, I think. And I was invited by a professor. I didn't have any special credentials other than everyone else he invited in as a guest speaker was venture backed. And traveled that route. They had some type of external financing. I was one of his students. We kept in touch. We got along really well. Ed Shao, I've had him on the podcast. And he wanted me to come back to share my Experiences on the front lines because I was a recent grad also, I wasn't decades out. Yeah.

32:36 Bootstrap. Right, so I went back. And The crux of My presentation every time.

32:43 And it modified, you know, grew and it evolved and the notes for that ended up becoming the backbone of the four hour work week. As I ran all these experiments, but The opener. was effectively Who here wants to be a salesperson? And no hands would go up.

32:58 Nobody would raise their head, right? So good. Especially because this is Princeton, right? And they're like hails, uh like makes my skin crawl. Yeah, so you had people who were maybe going into entrepreneurship, more likely investment banking or management consulting, probably, but A lot of them had aspirations to be an entrepreneur and I said, Okay. Whether or not you want to be a salesperson is irrelevant.

33:19 label that's fine, but you have to become a really good deal maker. You have to become a good deal maker. Love that. And a lot of those presentations focused on the kind of stuff that we're talking about. Asking for what you want, deciding how to position it. deciding how to really determine what the other person wants because maybe you are

33:38 causing a fuss over something that is just an indicator what they actually want. And there are books that help with this. Getting past no is one of my favorites. There are many others. And that is why we're spending some time on this. Are there other Let's just call them comfort challenges, let's say, besides the asking for a discount. On a cup of coffee. And I wanna make one modification to what you said.

33:58 Which is when you first okay, maybe the first time you do this will make it softball. Fine. So you can ask for the discount and then you can mention you're doing it as an exercise for a book or something else. But then when you've tried that once or twice No, you can't say that. Yeah. Make it more uncomfortable. Yeah. Are there other small challenges like that where people can build their tolerance to discomfort? In a similar way. Yeah. And let me give you two

34:22 One you could do right now. And so this is something from the book about and it's the only book I think that you actually make money in the first few pages. And it's something that literally everyone can do right now. Ask one friend to invest a dollar in you. Right now.

34:35 Literally get on your phone. Venmo, PayPal, crypto. Whatever it is, and just message someone on WhatsApp, whatever it is, and say, Hey, I I got this idea for a business where I want to start a business, but I'm looking for one person to be on my board of advisors or my investor. Will you Venmo me? One dollar. And I did this with a guy named Jake. About a month and a half ago, and his hand was trembling. He's like And then he you want to make it harder, call the person.

34:56 Don't just text message them, call them. And it's silly. Right. And I think business should be fun. I don't think we should have these day jobs that we hate all day. That seems horrible. But this is a fun thing that you can do. Just a a little dollar. One one tiny little dollar and that's

35:10 But guess what, every billion dollar company started with dollar. And so building up that practice where you just kinda asked for the dollar and then you get it. Like oh shit. That's the beginning. This is gonna be such a mundane procedural stupid question I'm gonna ask anyway. If they're like, what am I getting for my dollar as an investor, what do you say? Exactly. So the line I like to use is I love your support as I'm starting my business and I'd love for you to be on my board of advisors so I can keep you informed as I'm working on my business. And it's a way to have people that

35:39 That care about you? are just a part of your journey. And I think people are surprised how much people want them to succeed. And so Jake called his brother, Jake called his other friend Tom. They're both like Who's Jake? Jake is a guy who read Nine Dollar Weekend and lived at my house for forty eight hours. So he read uh uh basically uh

35:57 prototype galley. Something like that. Yeah. And so we called these two people, he said, Hey Tom, I really love for you to support me. Can you send me a dollar right now? And he was shaking. Tom sent a dollar live. We Saw it on Venmo. And Jake was like. Mm.

36:12 And everyone can do that right now. Mm-hmm. Especially if you want to start a business. And you want to get going. Or guess what? If you have a business Do it to one friend, do it to a colleague, do it to your significant other. So that that's one I I highly recommend. The other one that this is stuff I still do to this day. They're silly right and because it should be fun. And guess what you're as you called it out really well, practice on the small stuff.

36:30 So when you get to bigger stuff, it's not as big a deal. Like I'm going to people's houses and knocking on doors. That's pretty scary. most of my videos on YouTube are me going up someone's door. I don't know them and I ask them what do you do for a living? That's a very big ask to a stranger. Imagine me knocking on your door here. You'd be like get the hell out of here. So the other one that I I'd recommend and this is a again, these are universal. You don't need money. Doesn't matter your gender, doesn't matter how rich or poor you are.

36:53 You can practice these and build your skills up and your confidence up to be successful in business. Because you said sales. Is the basis of billionaires. A lot of billionaires were really good at sales. Just footnote. Don't lose track. Yeah, I got you.

37:04 If you're not selling customers You're selling people on your ideas. You're selling people on why they should use your design specs instead of something else. You're selling them on why you deserve or at the very least it's okay that you take a week of paid time off. Like you are persuading. You are going to be in the persuasion business. Even if you are the most anti social

37:28 Of coders. At some point you have to interact with these bags of flesh called humans. Yeah. And this is part of the game. It is. The other one that's universal and I do it I did it last week. It was actually pretty fun. Is the compliment challenge.

37:43 Compliment jumps real s it it's what it sounds like. And so specifically what I like to compliment people on is clothing. I've never been a good dresser. You grew up in California, you know, Mervyn's? I grew up in East Coast Island, so I forget about clothing. But yeah, you you know, you moved to the Bayer, like you know Mervyn's, remember that store? Mervyn's vaguely. No, man, it was bad. That's the only place my mom bought his clothes from and it w it was rough most of my life. As I got older, I was like, kinda wanna dress well. And so the compliment challenge is anytime you see anyone with something nice that you're like, that's kind of a cool hat, cool jacket, cool shoes. So

38:10 Two weeks ago I was at the best western, and as I like to call it, it's the okay Western hotel. It's definitely not the best. This lady had shoes on and I was like And then the way I like to think about it specifically with these challenges is you have a three second rule. For me personally, is I won't negotiate with terrorists, I will not negotiate with myself. Mm. So within three seconds I have to make the decision to do it. Just go do it. Don't even think about it. And then by the time you do it, like that was never so scary.

38:32 And I still have the fear. It's not like at points you're th it goes away just get a little bit easier over time. So this lady was sitting having breakfast. With her husband and I'm like, Oh, I'm bothering her. I'm definitely bothered. And that's actually a really misconception in big in sales. We're like we're bothering the other people.

38:47 It's fascinating. I go up to her and like I'm really sorry to to bother you guys, but I love your shoes. She's like, Thank you so much. I was like, Do you mind telling me where you got him from? It's like yeah, I got them from J C Pennies. I was like awesome. I I think my girlfriend like those. Have a great day. And she's like, Thank you so much. That was really nice of you. I was like, Okay, went back to my chair. And so That's that's one of the misconceptions in sales is that we're actually harassing or bothering people when

39:06 Maybe it's actually a good thing. And people need to maybe reconsider their perception of what a sale is. Quick pause. If the book title keeps coming up, we're gonna have to cut it. No, no, did I say it again? You're good. We can mention it, but if it if there's too much density, we'll have to thin it out a little bit. So back to the story.

39:23 By the way, great feedback. Thank you. That's like a superpower. I mean, that alone is It's great. I don't know if you want to include that in your content, but we we could include it. Actually, I mean shit, if you're okay with it. Yeah. I think this is like like one of my superpowers at App Sumo, we could say is fe not just my superpower, one of our values is feedback is a gift. That is also on Walls it.

39:41 The artist formerly known as Facebook, right? Feedback is a gift. Is that what they said in there? Yeah. Oh wow. That's the thing. But it is and This is fun. Okay, yeah, if we can if we can keep it in, that'd be great. When I was as an example, right, when I was

39:55 Early on. Preparing for the four hour work week. I went to media training. I'd never done real media before. And they were like, You must say As in my book, right? In my book. Mention the title and I did it. I got really good at it.

40:10 And um If you're on Morning Television And you have forty five seconds and they're gonna mispronounce your name and get your book title wrong, yes, it's a good idea to g to get it in. With longer format, you have the time to to work with nuance. And

40:28 I will tell people right now, look, I'll keep it simple. Just go buy the fucking book because Because I've seen what the blog post has done. I've spent enough time with you. I've seen you in action. We've collaborated way back in the the day on the Tim Ferris experiment TV show. Got to see a lot of this stuff live, got to practice a lot of it live. So You know what you're talking about.

40:51 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Every small business owner I know, and that includes me, is asking themselves the same question. What is the one key move? The one key decision that'll take my business to the next level in 2024. Very often, that move is hiring the right person for the right job. I've seen this personally in my own companies when a new member comes on board, brings in fresh ideas, challenges the status quo, shakes up some systems, which can propel the entire company, the entire team forward. And it sometimes changes the entire business model or gives you an entire new revenue stream. I've seen this personally.

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42:27 Coming back to the sales, I will say Don't assume. That Complimenting someone. Or approaching someone.

42:37 is going to be bothersome or harass them. However, there are times when that can be the case. In the sense that I remember in Silicon Valley, man, this is part of the reason why I was like I need to take a break from This place geographically. I would be at dinners. Dinners.

42:53 Sometimes with my girlfriend, we've been on a date. And a dude, it was always a dude. It was always a dude. Some dude in his like mid twenties would come over and be like Hi Tim and pull up a chair and just sit down and pitch me on a startup. And I remember on multiple occasions, uh there were times when I was not as delicate about it, but I would just be like John.

43:14 Your name, John, you didn't even mention your name. John, I'll just call you John. I mean John. It does not matter how good your pitch is right now, it could be the best pitch in the world. The timing is not good. And I'll just share one more that I thought was amusing, which is a counterpoint, although I will say Oftentimes the it's going to bother someone, it's going to be rude. It's going to be fill in the blank negative label. is an excuse for us to avoid doing the thing that is uncomfortable.

43:40 However. One counterexample. We're sitting here in Austin. I was here at South by South by South West. So that is a huge festival here in Austin. Great fun. And I was on an escalator.

43:52 And I was exhausted because I'm an introvert. which people may not realize because I have one on one conversations and then broadcast it to millions of people, but very introverted, I get depleted. When I go to events and I do things like book signings, I'm Toast for Two, three days. So I'm on the escalator and literally like putting my face like nuzzling into my girlfriend's neck because I'm trying to hide from the world. And she is above me in the escalator. A guy reaches over her shoulder and taps me on the shoulder to pitch me on a startup. So don't do that.

44:22 Uh dude, I got a a guy in I was in Barcelona. I was in Spandex, just to be clear. I just finished a bike ride and this guy And he's like, You're no Kagan, right? I'm like, Yeah, I'm no Kagan. He's like, dude, give me a hug. I was like I d I don't know you. And then he's like He's like, you gotta come meet my friend. I was like

44:41 Dude, I'm just getting a beer. Just let me get my Australian dam and chill out, dude. And yes, I'll come talk to you and your friend. It was just a little bit too imposing. But Total. fetch marathon, but I will say that for me

44:55 This is very much an Austin thing, too. If you meet anyone for the first time And and perhaps I've spent too much time in Japan. Who knows? But If I stick out my hand and you say I'm a hugger No, the worst don't do don't do that. And then they bear hug you. They bare like

45:13 Like Will Farrell comedy extended hug? Don't do that, guys. Don't do that, guys. Do the bow. Just about anything. That's fine. Please don't. So imposing. Like I'm a hugger. It's like all right, I'm a kicker. Doesn't mean I'm gonna kick you, though. Slap it. Great. So pro tips. Let me drop I'll drop one thing uh especially in sales. We're talking about challenges. And by the way, all these challenges do lead up In what I think has helped me be successful. Is is asking and practicing. And so for sales I I have a little framework, it works super well. It's called Law.

45:44 Listen, options transition. And this is the same thing in asking. Just listen to the other person. So first off, I'm gonna listen to Tim. Talk to them about their problems, if especially if you're starting a business. You're like, let me talk to you about your shirts. What do you like about your shirts? What do you not like about your shirts? Tell me more about your shirts and just listen. Just

45:59 Think if you're doing a podcast interview. And you're just interviewing them and getting feedback. Okay. Then you present an option to your person. It's like hey, oh you like shirts? What about this shirt at this price? And they say, Yeah, that actually solves my problem. Or if you can't, you don't and then you transition them to All right, pay me.

46:14 All right, let's move on to a next step. Let's put it in the calendar, which I'm always a huge like lock it in the cow. If you're trying to get sales, always in the cow. Or how do you lock it in the cow in a case like this? Like what goes into the calendar? So what I'm doing. I'll give you an example. Yesterday I was talking

46:29 to this woman at a company that I want to work with. And it was like all right, well, we'd like to do something together, cool, I'll follow up with an email. And I'm like just do it right now. And so my phrase is always this, I have my calendar open. How does this date work at this time?

46:42 And that's such an easier decision for her to then make and say, Actually yeah, cool, let's place holder it. It also saves so much bandwidth over time. Right. Like you add that up over as a process, right? If you're constantly doing Follow up emails? Yeah, and I wanna make sure I have ten percent of your life is dealing with those follow up emails. So let's talk about

47:01 What we left. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago. Just because I like to bookmark Practices. at different stages because I I do find that they inform a lot. And I'm also personally curious. These conversations are ultimately always personal to me. So CEO frameworks.

47:17 Yeah. Things that you do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. You mentioned the bi annual For lack of better descriptor, recurring expense review, right? You mentioned that already. What are some other things? Because you've had quite a bit of practice now. Yeah, let me show you a few, because I think it's kinda cooler when you get to see it. So every single day at Appsumo.com Can I say the website? Or is it am I saying too much? That's fine. Everyone I every single day.com.com. Yeah, we'll bleep it out. You can check this out. I think you can I and you can talk through it. I'm happy you can share these numbers. So every single day. This is something Keith Rebois does and Okay. So this is in So every day we have a daily pulse, that's what we call it. And let's zoom out for one sec. Mm-hmm.

47:57 Have one singular goal. That's what I learned from Zuckerberg and that's what I do at AppSumo.com. And so with appsumo.com this year, our one single goal is forty five million dollars net revenue. Mm. That's net. Gross sales is definitely around seventy seven to eighty million, depending on how the year ends. And then every single day there is this Slack bot that posts like all of our key metrics that lead to our number one goal. Uh-huh. And it's tied into automation. Yeah.

48:20 So what are you using there? We're using Zapier and then we we use Snowflake when we have a two person business intelligence team. But Anyone could do this on a spreadsheet, just every day. You have one goal. How are you doing? Could I say this for a second? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well talk out some of the numbers. It's pretty interesting. So we have

48:36 Data updated through. This is a pulse spot, so it's being automatically posted. You're not manually pulling this. But you could. Yeah. And you can also by the way, if you're just starting out, just have a spreadsheet and check it every single day. Yeah, so you have month to date actual As compared to goal. So that's in and of itself meaningful, right? So you got total gross sales four point three million, let's call it versus Four point four three.

48:57 eight million total net revenue gross profit. A O V which is average order value. Yep. And New buyers, total buyers, plus members. Those are subscribers. Those are our VIP customers. VIP customers.

49:11 Daily sales. Which is broken out. New buyers, new buyer conversion rate, new versus existing buyer gross sales month to date. That's an interesting one. And then daily KPI report with monthly projections. So the KPI key performance indicator. So this is quite a bit of stuff.

49:29 And I'm wondering. If you had to eighty twenty this for your business right now. Because I'm not sure how Keith Reboy does. This or describes it. Say why combinator of talking about

49:43 the single weekly metric, right? Picking one or two weekly metrics that are tracked over time and you're trying to get that to compound at ten percent a week or whatever the number might be. So what What would you Yeah. kinda eighty twenty priorities in that list right now. For everyone out there, it could be different, right? We're more of an e commerce site with our business.

50:02 There's three numbers that I would just look at. Three numbers add up. So again, start with one goal. What is your goal and what's your date for that goal? So our goal is from zero January one At the end of the year, how do we get forty five million out revenue? And the three goals, the three KPIs that lead to that. It's basically just three for us traffic. So how many people are coming to the site. How many people actually buy, which is our conversion rate.

50:20 And then how much do they spend, which is our average order value. That's it. That's all I would look at. Now That's the the most simplest version of it. So if you have traffic times how much people buy, how much they spend, that gives you your revenue numbers.

50:30 But then we have subnumbers. That's where it It's complicated, but if I had to do eighty twenty, it would be that. Now what other people need to be thinking about though is what are the things that impact those three KPS. That's how you now get way more complicated. For sure. Just for fun. If you had to pick one of those three to optimize for twenty twenty four, which would it be? Oof.

50:48 With appsumo.com top of the funnel. So traffic, conversion, or average order volume. Yeah. If I only can pick one thing out of all of it. Yep. I would actually pick just number of deals. For our business. Number of deals. Yeah. So every business has to be a little bit more. help with I imagine the conversion and Yeah.

51:08 And so for every business out there, what's the core input that leads to your main outputs? Let's just take a lot of different examples. So YouTube. Lately, and this has been a big transformation for me is I'm setting unambitious goals. Okay. Tell me more. You know, I think it's Silicon Valley. If you're not 10Xing and I literally was with our board a month ago, I was like, if you're not 10x, no, you're failing. And I was like, Okay, I've read that book. And and so I got that T shirt too, guys. 10X everything is written by people that haven't 10X to business. And

51:38 The reality and let's let's say there's two parts there, but there's core for everything. So the core for my YouTube channel is two videos a month. That's it. That's what I found gets me to the main metrics that I need. And they're supporting metrics around it, but that's my core there, Appsumo.com. As of now, it's give or take around I'd have to ask Sean, he runs the the high level but it's about thirty five deals a month.

51:57 If we can do thirty five amazing software deals a month. We hit our targets, more or less. And so for your business, what's the core Numbers. We talked about this in the past, but what's the core number you can really just like everything kind of works backwards off of? And so for us it would be deals.

52:09 Okay. So we're gonna talk about other frameworks. And then we're gonna at some point we are gonna come back to you too,'cause I have questions around that. Sure. Top three bottom three. Mm. What is that? You know, you gave me feedback.

52:22 Early in the show, which is great. And this that's awesome. That's how you improve. I don't know if people don't realize that. Like the only way you look at yourself is with a mirror. And that's the same thing in your relationships to ask your partner today, right now. Hey, what am I doing well, or what do you want me to improve on? And we're gonna come back to this, but how much money have you spent on coaches, would you say, in the last five to ten years? Myself and the team.

52:42 Uh easily over a million. Okay. Easily overmine. So. We'll get into that. Coach. Yeah, I like feedback. That's how I can get better. It doesn't mean I accept all the feedback. But it means I can acknowledge all the feedback and make a decision.

52:54 So T three V three is something It's from Travis actually at Uber. And so the idea there and Andrew Chen who's one of my best friends and advisor brought it to me, he's been on the show. Basically just like every quarter, it's so light. I just don't like sometimes feedback'cause it's like these eighteen pages that I'm like, I don't know what to do. You have eighteen things to fucking do, but so much.

53:10 Just tell me the top three things I'm gonna crazy. Don't worry. What are the top three things you love that I'm doing? So I know I can continue it. And what are the bottom three things I can improve on. Three things is definitely doable. If not three, just even do one. You can do T one B one. And I just have it in my calendar. I think the more things you can just have automatic in your calendar, the better. So I just have my calendar ask team

53:29 T three B three every quarter. And so right now in your business, if you're in the junior department, if you're the leader of the company, or even in relationships, whatever it is. Just go ask your partner. Ask someone. That you trust? And respect, hey, what is the top three things I'm doing?

53:42 What are the bottom three and and do that regularly and you will be able to keep improving. Can you give any examples of Real T three B three. So on my desk I print mine out. 'Cause I wanna see it. What you're doing well, you're probably gonna continue, but what you can improve is cool. So The team gave me feedback that I'm

53:56 Uh they want more autonomy that I'm too much up in their ass. Then I'm like and this is the funniest part. Everyone's like, I'm not a micromanager. I'm like dude, everyone who says that is. Okay. It's kinda like if uh yeah, if you see on a dating app anyone who says no drama, you're like oh you love drama. Huge red flag. Huge red flag. So they wanted more autonomy. And then it asked for s example, like what's an example or what's a moment, give me a solution that we make sure that as it comes to it. So for instance with appsing.com

54:25 I love going through our credit card bill. You know our credit card bills. Sometimes like in November,'cause Black Friday, it's about a million dollars. Almost a million dollars. And normally It can vary between three and five. That's on customer acquisition, like paid acquisition. Facebook or Amazon bill, fifty K a month. A lot of different ads. Just so I understand Amazon Bill, you're talking about A W S. A W S. Yeah. Yeah.

54:44 So I was going through every transaction and it'd be like a nine dollar transaction. I would love if your Amazon bill is just shit your employees are buying as gifts. AWS. I mean you know, there's well, as you get bigger, you also have checks and balances. Someone actually tried to scam us for thirty K a few weeks ago, which was super impressive. But I was going through these credit card bills and If we talk about coaches, we have a CFO coach. For the or VP of Finance. She's the CFO she was the CFO of Mailchimp.

55:06 Pretty good job. Pretty good company. And we're in a meeting and she's like, Noah, you know We talk about autonomy, we talk about trust. Do you think going through the credit card transactions and messaging people about a ten dollar purchase is really autonomy? And not trusting your VP of Finance Kevin who can do this? And that's like Good point. Stop looking at credit card bills.

55:24 So that was one of them. The other B three from this quarter was around longer term vision. I'm much more of a tactician and I like getting action, I like getting movement. And the team was like, You need to chill out and think longer for us. And come back with some type of longer plan. And so The

55:38 last six months of the year was really thinking about what do we want to do in the next three years. Cause I've been so focused in in business and generally about one year segments. So we spent so much time and now we have like a twenty twenty six vision. I think this is also very common. It's not true for everyone, but very common for people who've done a lot of bootstrapping. Yeah. More so than people who've raised a bunch of money. Yeah. We're aboard. Understandably wants to know what the hell you're long term. Yeah.

56:03 What your long term plans are because they want to realize their The equity return. Yeah. And that that was the feedback I got from the team and they're like, get out of the day today, let us do it. We got it. And just start moving the process forward. So I was thinking about like talking to customers, talking to partners, thinking about ourselves, like what do we like doing? What are we great at? And where can we be in three years? And then bringing that back to the team, incorporating them, getting them buy in. That was something

56:27 I got feedback in the past, like hey, you're just making decisions without us. So Yeah, by the end of the year, I think mid November now we have a three year vision. and base camps towards that vision. Basecamps project management.

56:38 Not necessarily Basecamp.com. But Basecamp specifically, what are milestones? Our destination is to be able to just distribute software tools for entrepreneurs. That's what we love doing. I love promoting things. And so how do we be the number one place to distribute software tools, not just deals, but software tools? And then what are the different key milestones? Numerically. As well as

56:57 from what we wanna do in the business within these separate years to be able to get there in twenty twenty six. So that was feedback. directly from the team. That they told me. And then we do this for everyone in the company. The top three, bottom three. Mm.

57:08 How do people track that? Where how do people keep it present, right? Because it is one thing having just come off of an off site myself. And I actually think we did a good job with this because we sort of assigned ownership next steps and then did working sessions during the off site, like, okay, let's actually get these things in motion because It's great to have a bunch of meals, have some wine, walk around, talk about big ideas. Oh we're so excited. Let's take a team photo next to the paper on the wall and then

57:37 Why, why like right back to status quo. How do people keep These top three bottom three. present or maybe a better way to word it is how do they keep themselves accountable. A few things that work for us. So one is scorecards. Everyone gets a scorecard.

57:51 If you're an appsima, you get a scorecard. And so I can show you an example of it. I focus on the leadership scorecard. So I have a company scorecard. What are our top three things we're trying to do in Q one? And Sean, let's he's our head of revenue, Alona She's our COO. They each have a scorecard. We're just what are your top three things based on what we're trying to do in Q one? Okay, this would be for Q one. Yeah. And so that is a helpful way where maybe it's something they want to improve or maybe it's just something that they need to work on.

58:14 Or it's just an outcome that we want and then we agree on what those are. They propose it, I review it, and then we decide it. Got it. It doesn't mean necessarily like, hey, it's gonna be one of their B threes, but that for me is like the three things that they want to get better at. Or they wanna accomplish. The other thing I would say.

58:28 Yeah, it sounded like you guys had a Planning session and all this stuff. We had a you know, I told you we have a three year vision. And then we have like all the stuff. But on Monday I was with one of my coaches, Dan Putt from Reboot.

58:39 And I was talking to Dan, I was like, I don't know if we're on the same page what we're doing,'cause I'm not really clear. He's like, Well, if you're not clear, they're definitely not clear. Yeah. Ha.

58:48 And uh I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Right, it comes from the top. How are you leading by example? If I'm not clear where we're gonna go necessarily in the next quarter, like does everyone else know? So we had a a meeting and so that dying I was like everyone needs to bring their their top Scorecard projects.

59:02 We need a line on them, make sure they're tied to the main thing, and have a one pager around it. I mean the next day, everyone brought their stuff and we have a one pager that ties all this together. And so now being very, very clear, like what's our number goals, what's our key projects. And by the way, this is something that's counterintuitive in businesses is like if there's not fighting You're not really getting the best ideas.

59:21 I want more people saying no. Like the best people at Facebook when I was there were always saying no to Mark. And I was always like, Yeah, Mark, that was a pretty good idea. That's maybe when I got fired. But over time I've realized that challenging respectfully is very healthy. And so you ask about feedback and all that, it's Ask for feedback reality, be clear in what success is. That's what a scorecard is. It's like here is success for me with our work. And then you can be able to measure against that in a very clear amount of time.

59:46 Okay, we are gonna come back to saying no pretty quickly. Enabling yourself to say yes to the things that matter is being Able And equipped to say no. Yeah. So I do want to come back to that. Other frameworks.

59:59 That you would uh Like to mention. The other One I do that this changed everything for me in the past two years, especially as a CEO. Was a weekly review.

1:00:09 And so I only have three questions. And really noticing what you actually do. A lot of people are like, I have all these frameworks. And then you ask them like a year later, like, Yeah, I don't use it again. So maybe they've evolved it, but really it it's not sticking. And so this is one that sticks with me. And I can show you it comes up on my phone. So every week I get a slack bot.

1:00:25 Here it is. Can see. So it says complete your Friday weekly review. So today is Friday as we're we're chatting. You can click on it. And there's three questions. And the three questions are very, very simple. It's how was the week?

1:00:36 One through five and why? And this is you could do whether you're CEO or whether you're a junior person. And so we track it. We track the ratings every week. One is sucked, five is fantastic.

1:00:46 Yeah. So this week was a five. This week crushed. And that's thinking about okay, well, what made this week a five? What happened this week? I gotta hang out with you. We had lack of clarity on Monday. On Tuesday we dialed in our Q one planning and everyone was like super hyped on that. I finished compensation, which was Challenging about how much people get paid. So this week was a five minute explaining line adding.

1:01:05 All those different things. And it's not always like I just bullet point. I don't necessarily need to write stories. Number two thing, especially is my leadership style. I noticed I was very inconsistent. Yeah, were you consistent? Yeah, so my number two question is was I consistent this week one through five and uh basically because I go into a meeting And I would just start

1:01:20 Fucking ripping on people. Like I was in meet with Mitchell and Ullman and I'm just like shitting all over them. I'm like your ideas are sucky and I wasn't coming with solutions. That week was a three. That was not a good idea. Because if as a leader You want consistent experience for your the people you work with. And you're being consistent based on

1:01:39 feedback you've received from the team in your top three, bottom three? Is that sort of a A little bit. It's also this is more my own subjective opinion. Got it. This is how you feel. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I found this really, really helpful. And then the last question Is what are my top three for next week? So it makes me be very more focused about okay.

1:01:54 I have a singular goal. We have Q one priorities. Now I can break these down to smaller levels and say like, okay, this upcoming week, what are the three things you want to work on? Then with my executive assistant and our chief of staff, we can help realign my schedule. Like, is that actually what I'm working on next week or is it a bunch of other things? One tool we stopped using because it costs money. So we stopped paying for it. But there is a tool that does this T three B three and then follows up and you can have all of it. But I was like, I think we can do it in Google Forms for cheaper. Uh is Lattice. Lattice. Lattice HQ.com. It's

1:02:23 Sam Altman's brother. Mm. Jack. Got it. But it was like fifteen thousand a year and I was like I think Google Forms for free a year gonna do pretty equivalent and just it's a little more work on the team. Shout out Charlotte. And Anna and Angelina for helping facilitate it. But yeah, that actually will do your tracking and then you could double check how you are against it versus

1:02:40 Honestly, Google Spreadsheets is comparable. Q on top and singular goal. Do you want to talk about either of these? A lot of it when you're trying to go anywhere in your business is like where do you want to be by the end of the year? So right now for anyone who's watching this, it's coming out in January, where do you want to be December thirty first, twenty twenty four? And just pick a destination with the time. Most people don't do either. They're like, and you dude, you've you've influenced so many people on health. Like I just want to be healthier.

1:03:02 What does that mean? Yeah. So be more clear on your goal and your destination. That's something that Zuckerberg I've talked to you about it, where like he brought me in a room, he's like, I want to get a billion people. Oh, like wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah. And this is when we had ten million. Yeah. That's a big one. That was amazing. It was exciting. And so have a very clear singular goal that you want to accomplish, but maybe it's like a thousand subscribers.

1:03:23 And my goals lately are much more unambitious because I want to focus on goals I can sustain. Could you give an example? Of what that looks like. So with appsumo.com In the past.

1:03:35 If we didn't two X a year, I'm like oh well it failed. And you'll hear this. You'll say, like shoot for the stars and if you're in at the moon, you're good. But also that means I'm running really fast. You burn out because you're working really hard and you're not getting where you want to go. And so now with absolutely more general growth range is five to ten percent a year. And so this year

1:03:50 For twenty twenty four, I believe it'll be around seven percent. Mm. And the reason that is is because if I could do seven percent over year after year after year after year. Yeah, you end up the warm buffet of Upsumo. Exactly. And the other thing that I've noticed through these unambitious goals, and I'll give more examples. is that it creates more freedom for taking 10x experiments.

1:04:09 So we're doing a lot more content this year by the time this comes out. We're gonna be trying doing like a an alternative to product time and some of these other options, but If we're so focused on having to grow revenue and do all these things, you don't really have Oxygen. experiment in a way that feels confident. So same thing with my YouTube channel. I'm going from one million to one point two five million this year.

1:04:27 You know, like twenty five percent, but You know, we've been going fifty percent. And that's because I would say we've had less aggressive goals. And so thinking about that for everyone out there, I do think Silicon Valley and what they're telling you. Oh, you got a 10X. That's because these investors don't care if people fail.

1:04:42 I would add to that. This is super important. I'm glad you're bringing it up because I do like how some of these outrageous questions break your mental models or your assumptions about what you can or can't do. Right. So how could you achieve your ten year goals in the next six months? Love that. Great. That's an excellent thought exercise, but if you're applying to yourself As a bootstrapped entrepreneur.

1:05:05 Ten X or Bust. And if Let's just say well being or happiness is Reality minus expectations. Yes. you can paint yourself into a precarious corner and you can paint your team and employees into a very precarious corner.

1:05:21 Corner. In the venture backed power law distribution of startups and venture capital. There are a few things you gotta realize. The first is that Investors are banking on that kind of power law.

1:05:35 return within tech. So they're looking at huge possible multiples, right? So they can make a thousand X on something that breaks out. This happens. And that pays for all the losses. Other invisible I would say invisible to the public factors include The incentives you may not see in the headlines, for instance, if A founder

1:05:54 is able to take money off the table with large rounds of financing. They're already in the black. And then For the company outcome to have a huge impact on their quality of life. They're willing

1:06:08 And able to make Enormous outsized. That's With ridiculous ambitions because guess what? It's not in the news, but they already have twenty million in the bank.

1:06:18 They're good. And this is why I think what you're saying is really important. The consistency matters. And I wanna tie this because everything is related to everything in some respects and I wanna talk about YouTube briefly. We are gonna talk a lot about building, but guys, these are the ingredients that allow you to build an experiment consistently. You need to develop certain attributes and frameworks. We can talk about

1:06:43 KPIs and goals and what we want to achieve. There's a survivorship bias in entrepreneurship where you tend to hear about the success stories. Hundred percent. One of the things you have done on YouTube, I'm not sure if this is gonna be fertile ground for For harvesting, so we'll see. But you've asked a lot of Millionaires, billionaires. Versions of Was It Worth It.

1:07:05 What do you regret? Are there any takeaways from that that were Either non obvious or that have really stuck for you. Because it's easy Two

1:07:17 Find every year some version of the article that is like so and so talked to people on their deathbed and they all said I wish I had spent more time with my family and less time in the office. It's like okay, fine. Right. Don't neglect your health. Fine. I get it. Like these these are all kind of predictable things you would expect. And no one on their deathbed if they would don't want to be considered like A miserly cunt is gonna say, My family sucks. I really wish I'd spent more time in the office. They're just not gonna say that as their legacy.

1:07:45 So Has anything really stuck with you from those conversations or lines of questioning. Was it worth it? If there were any regrets, things they would have done differently. For context for the listeners, interview John Paul DeJoria, founder of Patrone Tequila, Paul Mitchell hair care.

1:08:03 Polarphalia, founder of Kinko sold that for two point four billion. John Paul sold. Patron for three point five billion. Founder of Qualcomm. Hundred billion dollar company.

1:08:14 There's a few things that have stood out From chatting with them. One. None of them became billionaires within twenty years. Not one.

1:08:23 Not paper money where it's coming up and down super quickly or crypto billionaires where it can go away. Took a long time. Long, long time. Number two. They all got rich and this is kind of

1:08:32 People know these things just like you said, like deathbed people don't know to spend more time with their family, but they don't do it. This is another one. They all got rich in one way. Just one thing. John Paul DeGoria, just palmetral hair care. Then he able to do it again, which is we can talk about that. There's something there. Kinko's, just copier.

1:08:47 Larry Janesky. Just basements. Right, Michael Hudner just ships. But all of us are like, No, I'm gonna diversify.

1:08:54 But then you think about all these people. It's like ah they just did one thing. Two other things I would comment from billionaires two to three. They're all entrepreneurs. They weren't W two employees.

1:09:05 They hire W two people. The richest people on earth. They hire W two people. And so it's realizing like, oh, maybe this entrepreneurship is there's some upside to that. The one that you commented on another Highlight there.

1:09:17 And this is from John Paul DeJoya, which I thought was super powerful. And this is something you start noticing with billionaires, they're actually all really good at sales. And that is the skill you're like, Oh, it's asking. How can I practice it? And Jean Paul DeJorry, I don't have hair, you don't have hair. He was like

1:09:31 Give me your hand. I'm gonna put on lotion. And he like rubbed it on my hair. He's like, How's that feel? I was like It feels actually pretty good. He's like, How your hands feel? I'm like They feel good. I literally went home and bought Paul Mitchell hair care. I went home and bought it. And he was just like, What I like to do is find the best product that exists.

1:09:46 And make sure it's a product people reorder. I'm like, Oh, that's smart. And then I'm really good at selling. I was like ah that's really interesting. So there's something about selling I would say that stood out for me. And then lastly, yeah, I think

1:09:57 I would say fifty fifty. Seem like they could be happier. I just don't know if they all seemed as happy as I would have imagined. I'm like, dude, you're a billion. You can literally do anything you want all day, forever. And I think like John Paul DeJoy for me stood out where he was just very kind.

1:10:10 He was kind with me, he was kind with the staff, he was kind Like he sold. Patron and he sent a fifty million dollar check that day. And he felt like he had a good balance, like the I would say the Austin balance of like I'm not trying to be a Silicon Valley workaholic, but I'm trying to Work, make a lot of money, and have a great life. And I I admired that. Yeah. He gives me that impression. I've had him on the podcast. Yeah. And

1:10:31 What that proves to me is that it's possible. Yeah. A lot. But you don't have to be a prick. It's not a pre it's not a prerequisite. You don't have to be Gordon Gecko. Yeah. You don't have to.

1:10:47 But I would add to that is that There are many different ways to be good at sales. When I first graduated from school and when I first moved to Silicon Valley And I was selling fiber channel storage area networks.

1:11:00 And I was the lowest paid sales guy, which I learned because of spreadsheet got emailed to the wrong place, and one of my buddies was like, Bro. You're gonna love this. And he should be He showed me the annual salaries and I was like, you know, barely above the receptionist. Which I was actually okay with because it was commission based. But

1:11:21 Didn't love the fact that I hadn't negotiated harder on the front end, but At the time I was pretty desperate'cause I had I had gone without a job for a while and my parents were like, So you can stay here as long as you want. But what's going on The point I want to make is I had uh desk in a chair in an emergency exit. It was like shoehorned into a fire exit. Totally Not up to code.

1:11:44 But I took a lot of opposite approaches from other sales guys who'd come in from bigger companies like EMC. And there were some great salespeople from EMC as an example. They had a really good training culture, really good hiring practice, generally competitive athletes or former competitive athletes. But the approach I took was Two things. I'll just mention this briefly because it

1:12:05 might alleviate some of the allergic reaction that people have to these word sales. The first is that I looked at The biggest block in the vein of the task that hinders your task is your task. And what I realized I couldn't get the deal makers on the phone.

1:12:20 I couldn't get the CEOs and CTOs who would have to green light a seven figure investment on the phone because there were so many gatekeepers. So I just did the opposite of what I saw around me, which was instead of making calls during nine to five, I just made calls before and after nine to five. And guess what? Those people who are working dogs You know, men and women who have really gotten to the top. Still tend to work a lot.

1:12:41 By and large. And so they would pick up the phone. The second was I studied the tech inside and out to the extent that when we got to the point of closing a sale. And sometimes they'd get handed off to accounting and the accounting department or the VP of finance would ask them, Who's your sales guy? And they would say I don't know who my sales guy is. And then eventually they'd be like, Oh wait.

1:13:04 Is Tim my sales guy? Because I Came in With Not quite the knowledge of an engineer, but I spent all my time with the engineers. So I had technical conversations. I'd be like, Oh, well, let me guess. Like you probably have this Solaris system and this and this and this and using this and this. You might have problems with this.

1:13:19 And You can approach it in a technical way as one example with certain Products. It doesn't have to be

1:13:29 Llengarry Glenn Ross. So I just want to to mention that. The following I'm curious for you. And this is something I've been thinking about a lot about is how come immigrants are so successful? And specifically, I think one, they have you can control their attitude and I think they have good attitudes about like I gotta figure this out. And the second thing is

1:13:44 Effort. There's no limit on effort. There's only a limit on time. So I I was really f curious'cause especially with four work I I just remember your effort was insane. And so I wanted to know and this is sales, right? Sales is like all right, well, I'm gonna put in effort to see if I can help this person if I believe I can. So I wanted to hear more. I was curious to hear more about like what effort you put in. Cause I I just remember the time I was like, Who is this guy and how hard it man, he's working hard.

1:14:06 into the book itself, like the the writing or the launch. The launch. The launch, yeah. Let's see, where to begin? So If I think back to the launch of that first book, I still approach

1:14:17 My launches Very similarly. Believe it or not. as the tools have changed and the technology and the platforms have changed, the the general principles that I used I still use

1:14:29 To this day. For instance. For every Launch. Book or otherwise.

1:14:35 I have looked at the landscape and interviewed people. So for the book, for instance. I interviewed and you can interview people. Who might seem out of reach.

1:14:45 Keeping in mind I had no platform, no nothing at the time. I remember how but I just had to reach out and ask. And if you get somebody on a good day. And you've you know, maybe you take your hat off, put it in your hand and Do a little begging. Best writing authors

1:14:59 We're very forthcoming with their time. So in a number of instances I was able to interview best writing authors. What I mean by that is real prose masters. and prolific non fiction writers. Who had

1:15:13 very, very High quality output. on their writing process. So I did that. Prior to writing the book.

1:15:20 Then Seeing that the end was near and this was all on a schedule, although I faced a lot of hiccups and a lot of challenges along the way, so it wasn't a straight line, but When I knew that my book was probably going to be delivered, was scheduled to be delivered in let's just say three months, I started interviewing Best selling authors, which are not always the same as best writing authors. And

1:15:43 The questions revolved around Their most recent launches. And specifically The Vikles or formats or people who seem to be diminishing an impact. And those that seem to be

1:15:56 Ascending an impact. And those that were ascending an impact I assumed rightly at the time, and this has been true almost every time. would be uncrowded. So for instance For the four hour work week.

1:16:08 It became clear even then. That Television and radio seem to be television especially, television seem to be diminishing. In its impact on sales. None the less, the dominant playbook included tons and tons and tons of say morning TV.

1:16:25 But almost every best selling author I spoke to said. By and large, not worth the effort. They said, however, there are a few other things. that have been impressive and notable. Number one is that Certain radio programs.

1:16:39 Like MPR and so on. Move a lot of books. This is again two thousand let's just call it. six prior to the publication in two thousand seven. And

1:16:51 Then towards the End of two thousand Six. And I actually remember this because we're recording this at the end of this of December. And I remember sitting at my parents' kitchen table after Christmas. And sitting down. to really put together a plan for the first book.

1:17:08 And Another pattern that had emerged is people said, you know I'm not really a tech person, but there are these things called blogs. And uh For whatever reason, these single author blogs move a lot of books.

1:17:21 And not a single person I recall in publishing gave a shit about blogs. So What I decided to do I also had a very self-imposed and also practically limited budget for the launch. So for me it was like five to ten grand. I can't remember on a huge whiteboard. And

1:17:37 Decided to make My target. Blocks. And there are many conversations that went into this. But Decide to put my effort into blogs. What's the most crowded channel? So I'm not asking it just about the formats, but also

1:17:52 the means of reaching bloggers. What's gonna be most crowded? Block comments. Email, these are the most crowded. So I took my Budget. and allocated it to in person travel.

1:18:03 Two events. Where in the hallways and at after parties and so on, I could Have drinks around or with the right.

1:18:11 Bloggers. And I spent all my time in the lounges, spent all my time in the waiting areas. And That is where I

1:18:23 committed my investment of time and money. Who knows? If that was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. Maybe I just got lucky, but it worked incredibly well. I'll just give one more recommendation and actually people can find

1:18:39 A talk I gave ages ago at South by Southwest, which is Called How to Build Your network and record time or some Clickbaity. sounding headline, but it does deliver. It explains a lot of this and also how I use South by Southwest similarly for the book because

1:18:54 South by was where the book really broke out. Yeah. But there was a bunch leading up to it, so This is going a little long, but it might be helpful for folks. Rule number one. Be nice to everyone.

1:19:05 And this isn't some feel good snow white, you know, hummingbirds landing on your hands kind of thing. This is this is the right thing to do, but it's also the most practical thing to do. And I'll give a a real example. I went to Blog World Expo or something and I'm hanging around, didn't go to any sessions in this particular case. A lot of folks had pointed out Robert Scoble. as a power broker, hugely influential, which which he certainly was.

1:19:30 And uh super sweet guy uh as well. And At that time I had no contact with him. He was the hottest girl at the prom, right? Everybody wanted to talk to him. And I didn't really know how to navigate the event, but I knew there would be people who were familiar with it. So I went to a lounge and I think it was a Seagate Lounge or something like that way back in the day. And uh there was a woman checking people in.

1:19:55 and kind of handling the the inbound traffic. And I just struck up a conversation. I was like, I bet you're meeting everybody. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm working on my first book. I'm kinda lost here. And we just talked. Like all that was true. Right. And we talked and we talked and we talked and I was explaining and I'm here I I laid out my whole plan. And I was like, Well, really my best

1:20:16 option is to focus on the blogs because the publisher owns a bunch of different territory. This is Not their first rodeo, but it's my first rodeo. So this is Kind of key. There were a bunch of things that I assumed were off limits for me. I don't understand radio. The publisher's gonna handle radio. I don't understand television. The publisher or other publicists are gonna handle that. So the one area I felt where I could play.

1:20:37 and potentially leverage things with blocks. So I'm explaining all of this. Well guess what? That woman who was checking people in turned out to be Robert Scovel's wife. And she was like, Oh. You should meet Robert. And then that led to meeting Robert.

1:20:50 I'm pretty sure I gave him sent him a galley. And I made it. Absolutely zero expectations. So first of all, I was like If it would be of interest, I can send you a galley after I describe the book.

1:21:03 For certain facets of it. I said it. What I can do also because you're not gonna probably have time to read the whole book. I'll just put in a couple of post-its for like the four or five pages that I think you'll find most Interesting. Most tactical.

1:21:17 And he's like, Great. Sent it off. That turned into a blog post he put up about what I'm reading, something like that. Went nuts. I don't recall the exact timing if that was before or after South by South West, and South by South West was in March. Talk about sales, right? I pitched myself to Hugh Forest at the time, who I believe was director of programming just for

1:21:38 South by South West interactive. Not music, not film. At the time it was like the redheaded stepchild. Nobody gave a shit about interactive or tech. It was just Nerdville. It was small. That was also the year that Twitter launched publicly at South By. You could see all the tweets in the world on one big screen TV. Where they were scrolling through in real time. And uh

1:21:58 Q To this day I feel a debt of gratitude, so Part of the reason I come back to South Bay every year is because I feel like It's just karmically the right thing to do. And Hugh is now running.

1:22:08 Pretty much the whole show, I believe, at this point. But I got a last minute cancellation. In like the cafeteria, like the Adobe sponsored cafeteria. Somebody backed out. I took a last minute Spot. I gave a presentation on the four hour work week.

1:22:24 I was able to print up flyers beforehand, which I did at the very last minute. And I am blanking on his name. I feel really badly about this, but It was the developer behind Firefox. I think so. Like Ross? Yes.

1:22:40 he had very graciously given me a quote for the four hour work week he read a galley and I can't remember how they came together. I owe him a debt of gratitude as well, but I printed up flyers with that quote. Yeah. With Based on galleys and encourage people to attend this cafeteria. Oh, you put up flyers for the event? I handed them out.

1:22:59 Like I had people handing them out. I put them up all over Austin. Printed them out, I'm sure it Kinko's. And I practiced in my friend's garage because I was crashing on a friend's couch and I remember practicing in his garage with his chihuahuas, you mentioned Chihuahuas. He had three chihuahuas and Clearly the Travis do not understand the content of my talk, but

1:23:22 I use them as the gauge of whether I was engaging or not. If they started like wandering around, then I had to change my mode. I had to be more Tony Robbins. And I prepped, I prepped, I prepped, I prepared my ass off for this thing. Like it was my first And last opportunity. To nail it.

1:23:39 And Got up on stage, I had this entire presentation with all the visuals. Of course what happens, laptop. Dies. And so I had to improv and just do voice only, which I think ended up being

1:23:50 A very good thing. And made autorespondable, I gave people this was key, and this is something you do very well, I gave people real Time challenges. I was like, here's something you can try today. You're gonna be going to a lot of sessions of South Bye. You're gonna take a lot of notes.

1:24:08 Here's what I suggest. Everybody gets busy, things get lost. Here are a few things you can try. Today. Here are a few things you can try in the next week related to autoresponders. Send me feedback. Let me know how it went. Go on my blog, let me know. I will give you also feedback like constructive advice. And It just went ballistic.

1:24:30 It went ballistic. And that set the conditions such that I could execute on other things. But Lest people think This was This

1:24:41 home run international phenomenon from the get go. That's not what happened. It did hit the extended bestseller list in its first week. But keep in mind the publisher only printed ten thousand copies. Nobody expected it to do anything. And

1:24:56 With those copies sold the vast majority of them, but that was not enough to hit the real print the seller list for advice how to, especially, which was hyper competitive at the time. It hit the extended list. So people in the in the business knew that it was on the list but not in the print edition. It took an an additional five or six months if I'm doing the math correctly to get

1:25:17 to number one on the New York Times for the monthly business list. And then it just stayed there for years. But To answer your question in terms of effort. Effort isn't enough.

1:25:28 Effort is not enough. You need A means of focusing that effort. So for me I used this. What's uncrowded.

1:25:36 What's overvalued, what's undervalued. That's how I found podcasts for the four hour chef. That's how I found m other things for the earlier books. And That's how the four hour chef sold whatever hundred thousand plus copies in its first week was because I jumped on these new things called podcasts. That is also the impetus behind me then starting my own podcast in two thousand fourteen. But you're right, I put a lot into it because

1:26:02 First and foremost and um Getting on my soapbox again, but I really, really, really, really put everything into that book. Like I did not leave anything behind. I put it all on the playing field and based on early feedback and based on also The Many

1:26:22 feedback forms. Many questions I had asked many revisions I had made. For years. Workshopping it in classes. I knew this stuff worked.

1:26:31 I knew it worked. I knew in other words, where I talking about App Sumo and your metrics, like I knew it converted. I just need a top of the funnel. And That led me to the

1:26:43 Blog. So Wow. Very similar. approach that I would take today with most things.

1:26:49 Wow. You seemed a lot happier when you're counting that story. Like I was noticing, like, earlier in the show, you're kinda like I don't know if you felt frustrated or I don't know how I don't know how you're feeling. You seemed excited and like proud. So tempting.

1:27:02 And Often the case, right? When you're in The weeds and you're just like running through this jungle with a machete trying to make shit happen and it's hard and things are going wrong and you think about that as the thing you have to do to get to the other thing.

1:27:19 But then you get to the other thing, meaning like you reach some escape velocity with your business success, and then you're like Okay, this is the thing I thought. that I was getting through other things for and um Happy with where I am, but I'm making trains run on time. That's cool.

1:27:37 Right? Like I'm a like a like a Swiss operator on some type of transport platform and I'm tweaking things, I'm pulling levers, I have other people doing a lot of the grunt work. But Those early chapters when I look back

1:27:52 That's where so much of the juice is. Like so much of the excitement. For me. Yeah. Right. Where you're like, Fuck, my computer broke. Right, gotta fix it. Gotta figure it out. Fuck you know. All right, flyers. Like Flyers. Okay, like I'm gonna give out flyers like Flyers. Okay, like I don't have anybody who's around'cause my friend has to work, like I'll give the talk to the dogs like all right, like Yeah. You get a chance. This is true later too, but like you really get a chance to prove

1:28:20 how resourceful and creative you can be. Because you don't have a huge bank account to play with. You don't have tons of employees. to delegate to things that oftentimes they shouldn't do in the first place. Right. Yeah. And

1:28:37 For me, that is the real heart and soul of entrepreneurship and The fun of it. is making something from nothing. Because you are resourceful, right? You look at

1:28:50 set of tools or a complete lack of tools and you see something different. You see a little gap. And You're able to pursue that and

1:29:01 manifest something in the world that otherwise doesn't exist. And the later stages are amazing and there are people who are so good at the later stages. I'm not convinced that I'm one of them. Okay. But The Early chapters.

1:29:16 Where at the time we're like, you know. It's gonna be great. One at some point I have X, one at some point. When I cross my number, which is a moving goalpost, right? You cross like a million and then you cross this and then you cross this and it keeps moving. that when I think back to those early chapters, I get I get excited.

1:29:36 It's like I remember How unknown it all was, too. Right. And how fun some of the unknowns were. There were definitely hard times. There were all sorts of difficult chapters that I'm sure I've blocked out from my memory. Yeah.

1:29:50 Uh but I wasn't frustrated earlier. At all. I think it's just the Juice of thinking back.

1:29:57 Two those very nascent stages. That's my guess. Yeah. Well it's also I try to remind myself that a lot of my nostalgia is a liar.

1:30:07 Oh total. Starting up C MO, I would drink most of the days which we were doing. I was just like drinking with Neville, fucking around, getting some deals and And then you remember like, Oh, I felt lonely, I felt really insecure, I felt for sure. And um I guess I wonder, is that something you're exploring now? So like what what is that?

1:30:26 creation or thing that you can bite into. Yeah. That was something I was wondering for you. In that No, I've obviously known you a long time and I remember it's funny, when I'm w doing this whole book thing, which I'm not talking about what the book's called.

1:30:38 No, no, no, no. No, no, dude. No one knows. Don't even look it up. And I I think about you because I think that guy fucking worked hard. Yeah. I remember you working hard. And uh Uh it made me wonder where you're at today. Because

1:30:53 I see you not chasing. I think in my in my older age, we're both in our early forties, I'm I think I was chasing a lot. I wanna get famous or I wanna get money and And then I I'm like I wonder how Not what you're chasing anymore, but like what you're enjoying or what you're

1:31:05 Not after is the right word and not what's next. But I'm noticing oh, Tim's not really going to be. Aggressive on YouTube and chasing what other people are doing. And so I'm I was just and it's not just you two, but I it made me I was like I wonder how he's evaluating things. Yeah, totally. I think

1:31:19 To your point of nostalgia being a liar, oftentimes, right? Where we have this rose colored picture of The past. If I look at The chapters. around say the beginning of the four hour work week, four hour body, et cetera. I was very hungry. I was moving very quickly.

1:31:35 And Certainly using processes in automation and so on, but There was a lot of uncertainty and I would say that As I have

1:31:46 prioritize mental health and just overall well being, which includes physical, but at the time I was in physical prime condition. I mean I was in very good shape. I was still competitive in sports. I would say that Looking back A lot of those adventures were formative and I enjoyed them but I

1:32:04 In retrospect should have Enjoyed them more. for what they were, which like these seminal moments. And I think part of what you're reading in me in terms of less chasing is that

1:32:17 I feel like and I suspect many people feel like Yeah, the dog that catches the car. Or The greyhound that catches the mechanical rabbit. And you're like, This is what I was chasing? It's good. Fuck.

1:32:30 That's funny. Like it's kind of like tragic comic, but Which is not to diminish. money. It's not to diminish financial success. It's I think easy er for us to have these conversations because there's a degree of security and stability and comfort.

1:32:46 So it's not to diminish any of that'cause I know what it feels like to be like fuck. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do about healthcare next month. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do about this next month. I know what that can feel like and it's not a good feeling. Eating from Jack in the Box. I remember eating so many meals from Jack in the Box.

1:33:02 On shoreline across the street from my shitty apartment with my terrible roommate who just ditched and like almost got all my stuff yanked because there are all these eviction notices. Like I remember those days. I don't want to return to those days. But Having caught the thing that I was chasing I've realized That none of these targets are fantasies.

1:33:25 They're kind of placeholders to keep you motivated. And I've also If you look at patterns in my life I tend to do things.

1:33:35 If I'm gonna do something well. Seems to be in the five to ten year range. Books. startup investing predominantly I focus on from say two thousand eight to two thousand fifteen and then I publish this blog post.

1:33:47 on taking a long startup vacation. And Stopped that categorically. I stopped doing it. Completely for a period of time. Because the game got saturated, it got more complicated. Much more competitive.

1:34:00 much riskier From a terms perspective, so I stopped. And then you have podcasting I'm coming up on ten years. Next April. And

1:34:09 It's a good time to pause and reflect. And I feel like podcasting also And I I will have questions for you about YouTube because I go back and forth on my thoughts on YouTube, but When I see best practices

1:34:25 Emerge. Or converge maybe is is a better way to put it with a lot of the algorithm driven growth slash lack of growth that we see. I really want to step back.

1:34:35 And see if I am In a position where I'm uniquely differentiated or have some type of competitive advantage. Not because I care about competition per se, but it's like am I in a red ocean that used to be a blue ocean. Or am I developing practices that are gonna lead me to a point of not just uniformity with others, but like are we all running towards a cliff like a bunch of lemmings?

1:35:01 In the sense that For instance, email I'm going all over the place, I realize, but like this is great. With like email blog. Especially if you're open source, like I'm based on WordPress. You effectively own your audience.

1:35:14 You don't own your audience, you have a direct relationship with your audience. Your audience is portable. If you're on a platform that includes almost any platform, there's some technical workarounds for these things, but you are renting your audience. And so I've seen multi million dollar Facebook pages back in the day when that was a huge thing. Get turnoff.

1:35:32 Just like PG and E might turn off. your power during a rolling blackout in California. It's like one day you're on and you have employees and a big business, the next day you are turned off. Yeah. And I've seen that over and over again. I've seen, for instance, organic reach get throttled, now you have to pay

1:35:49 I think it's foolish to assume that can't happen to whatever platforms you're using today. And As we've seen a number of precipitating events, COVID. For instance, the writer strike. Another example.

1:36:04 drive people to what they realized can be a profitable model in the form of podcasting. YouTube. As The mimicry of TikTok has engendered A drive to video in short

1:36:17 Form video. I feel like I have fewer and fewer Differentiators and advantages. And the human basis of recommendation has been replaced by

1:36:29 in large part kind of top down corporate directives and I'll go. Modifications. So I I feel Like I'm in a transitional period right now.

1:36:42 Potentially. where I'm I'm taking my foot off the gas'cause I'm not sure the car is going in a direction where I want to Take it to one twenty on the Autobahn, you know? So that's where I am. And

1:36:54 I'm also not in a rush because maybe it's just fatigue, frankly. I mean like I started the podcast ten years ago. And there are people with incredible longevity, and not very many, but like Rogan as an example. I mean the guy's a machine and he's very good at what he does. Ten years is also a long time for me. Right. That's a long time to do. to do one thing consistently. I'm gonna continue doing the podcast. But from a growth perspective

1:37:16 I feel like YouTube is probably one of the more appealing avenues for growth currently. But Offsetting that. is a desire to increasingly be less publicly

1:37:29 Visually recognized. Because there are compromises that I've made. related to that. There are safety issues, there are privacy issues. There's lots of weird stuff that happens. I'm not sure I want to actually I'm quite sure I do not want to. Make my face more recognizable.

1:37:46 On the counter argument side, I know we're going all over the place. No, dude, by the way, this is fire. Okay, good. This is fire. Keep going. I want to know. On the counter argument side. And this is both a reason not to do YouTube, but also a reason maybe I'm over Evaluating the risks.

1:38:02 And I've talked to some folks, I don't want to name them, but very well known. Iconic. writers, photographers, creators who did one thing very, very well. One thing. Which also makes me question sort of the Jack of All Trades approach that I think

1:38:18 is in some respects a norm now where you're Present and Growing on many, many different formats, but putting that aside for a second, the Half Life of Fame, I think, is going to Drop.

1:38:32 Precipitously. As algorithm chasing becomes more and more dominant and more and more determinant of what is surfaced in the sense that There will I

1:38:42 I would be shocked. If there's ever again someone as dominant as, say Oprah. Was. for effectively, let's just call it

1:38:53 Who knows? A third to a half of all the women. In the United States. One person, one show. the sort of long tail of personalization.

1:39:04 I think has largely removed that possibility. And If you even think about like the personal half life. Which I think we can extract like studying the micro to to study the macro,'cause the macro can seem super intimidating and abstract and ungraspable. But if you just think about your personal experience. And I've talked to friends about this.

1:39:23 Ten years ago. If you got sent some Crazy video. From friends. Like that video would stick around for a while, right? It might be the video that sticks around for like a week.

1:39:33 Oh my god, you see that crazy video of the thing? How many of those do you get per day now? Right? Something that would win the gold medal. Of the meme Olympics crushes all of the stupid things that you would have looked at. Ten years ago. Infinitely more Attention grabbing.

1:39:49 And the half life is what? Thirty seconds? Sixty seconds? So I think fame as a phenomenon in most cases. Online.

1:40:00 We'll have a very, very short Half life. And that worries me. A bit from uh psychological adaptive perspective because I think that has s supreme implications for

1:40:13 This sort of dopamine hit. Rat. Stepping on a cocaine pedal. aspect of content creation. If what you do

1:40:21 is less and less persistent. Meaning it has less and less durability. What game are you signing up for? And what does winning that game look like? These are really critical questions, right? Okay, we're all playing games right now. Beyond Food, shelter, a handful of things at at the lower rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We're all playing games.

1:40:41 What games you playing? And just as important. Like what does winning that game or those games look like. And is that the life you want?

1:40:50 So looking at how things are developing, and maybe this is a very fancy way of rationalizing just Being Older and more fatigue, I don't know. But I find where things are trending super, super worrisome. So if I could be long a number of things, I'd be like, Okay, mental health therapeutics.

1:41:07 Dialysis. Which seems pretty dystopian, but like I would be very long those things. I think we haven't even seen a glimpse of some of the mental health challenges that are on the horizon. So Probably a long answer to a very short question, but that informs I think a certain it's not just calmness

1:41:28 Although there's a lot that goes into that. on my side compared to my earlier self. But a not wanting to rush into committing at high speed. Yeah.

1:41:39 Certain directions that are very appealing right now at face value. I'm like, you know what? If you have Here we go. I'm gonna shut the fuck up in a second. But it's like here's the thing.

1:41:50 If I think about the authors I respect the most, if I think about the The filmmakers. I most aspire to be like or admire the most. They're not playing a volume game, right? Like Miyazaki who just put out

1:42:04 Think it's the boy and the heron. The Japanese name is Like how do you live? It's a totally different name. But They put out great work. that is uniquely their own. You watch that movie and if you've seen other studio Gibb Miyazaki movies, you're like, that is the signature. That could not be anyone other than Miyazaki. You see like a Daniel Day Lewis film. There's so many examples of this.

1:42:25 These people have unique capabilities they've harnessed. They don't need to rush. Right. So if I find myself feeling compelled to rush either it's a false signal I should ignore or I'm about to do something that a lot of other people could do.

1:42:40 And that for me is uh Q to really chill the fuck out and be like, wait, wait a second, let me go back, let me read Blue Ocean strategy, let me go back, let me read eighty twenty. Principle. Let me go back. And Read.

1:42:54 Any number of things. I mean I do like reading. Yeah. Let me go back and watch these following documentaries about people who really took an unorthodox path. And then let me sit down. And ask why do I feel like I am?

1:43:08 Compelled to rush. So There you have it. Wow, that was one, that was fucking fire. Thanks. This has been on my mind nonstop for the last couple of months.

1:43:19 I think people confuse in action with Patience. Okay, tell me more. What I heard. And I'm curious how you approach it is that instead of rushing really quickly, you you're understanding yourself and thinking patiently

1:43:32 Okay, what is my Right, play for me to move. And I think in the past, you know, and maybe you can revisit it is like, Okay, let's go rush and find things and maybe stuff will happen, but now you're like You're observing. You sound calm. You sound you're thinking about what's happening, where my advantages, what's going on.

1:43:46 And where is a place that you frankly want to play in instead of rushing into let's say YouTube world, which Does feel like a lot of people are rushing into these kind of things. Really thinking about what your play is. I love that. I guess the question I was curious about what is your approach for thinking about what's underserved.'Cause what you said I thought w

1:44:04 It's fucking powerful. It's like you can put effort but in the wrong thing. When you did your book you're like, Oh blogging is it and then your second book, podcasting is it. How are you approaching thinking about Getting to like even now you're like all right. I like podcasts, I'm doing podcasts.

1:44:18 Yeah. Oh, I love doing podcasts. I love doing podcasts. It's going to get a lot harder as a business. It is already I'm very fortunate in the sense that and this was not accidental, right? Like this podcast and the audience for this podcast. This podcast is intended to be

1:44:34 long form, thoughtful, dense. And incredibly Practical, tactical. And I'll mention it because you've been very good at receiving feedback, but million dollar weekend, we are gonna get to it and talk about very practical steps. All of this is practical though, if you look at it through the lens of making decisions. This

1:44:52 has been positioned as high ultra premium. As far as podcasts go, advertisers, audience, right? And we've done all the polling and so on. So it's like if you want to reach Ted, this is the podcast, right? If you want to hit millions or at least let's just say thousands of very, very well known creators with one podcast. Like this is the podcast. So the premium positioning means that like for the next year, we're basically already sold out with advertising, right? So I'm in a very good position, but I think overall It is

1:45:21 This is true on YouTube too, but And it it relates to everything I just said, it is going to get and is getting harder to differentiate. Right. Like back when I had like Jamie Fox and Arnold Swiss around the podcast. That was insane. Blew people's minds, right? Like that was just not something that really happened. And Now that you have incredibly talented people.

1:45:41 Comedians, entertainers, writers, right? That's why I mentioned the writer's strike earlier. who for a period of time did not have the option of doing what they normally do. And they dip their toe into podcasting. They dip their toe into YouTube and they're like wow, actually I'm really good at this. And I can get paid.

1:45:55 Interesting. There are exceptional, exceptionally Skilled people. Producing things. For podcasts and YouTube.

1:46:03 What I'm saying is the bar for quality has gone up. dramatically in all of these areas. But the possibility for originality I would say has has diminished. as a result of the the sheer volume of entrance. So In terms of thinking about like what's unserved, yeah I would say that

1:46:22 I'm looking for a Venn diagram because asking If you ask Any of the questions I'm asking myself in isolation, which I've done in the past. you can lead yourself to bad decisions. So if you ask yourself, what can I uniquely do? And that's your question.

1:46:36 And you use that to determine what you do. You can end up doing things that you Dislike. That are draining. That don't have

1:46:44 Any type of market fit whatsoever. So that's not enough, right? Although for me that is necessary. Like what am I uniquely suited to do? Because that will give me not only An immediate Save. first mover or early mover advantage, it gives me endurance.

1:47:01 So Being uniquely suited to something doesn't mean that you are the only person that can do it, maybe you just love it more. Right, like with me and language learning as an example. Now that's not a business. I mean it did lead to me being one of the first investors into a lingo, so that worked out, but

1:47:16 I have infinite endurance for that in a way that most people don't. That's a huge advantage, even though other people could technically do it. So there's What am I

1:47:25 uniquely suited for what do I find easy that other people find hard? Then there's what is underserved, but if you approach that by itself. you can make some really bad decisions. And I've done that in the past. Like what do people need? Now

1:47:39 I'm not the boss of myself. I've turned my audience into the boss of me. This is also how people get shaped in horrifying ways by social media or their audiences on YouTube, right? Your most extreme behaviors get reinforced. So you repeat those, you exaggerate them. And

1:47:57 Your stage presence, your social media presence. becomes you. This is really important. You have to be careful about the masks you wear because you will become those masks. And I've seen that. I'm sure you've met people like It's terrifying.

1:48:10 you will be shaped by your audience and by these creative decisions. So Not just asking what is the unmet need, but a question I might ask is like What experiments can I run? That I think we'll meet

1:48:23 the needs intended by say the podcast in a different way. And also, I mean another question that I ask is like instead of like what is the new new thing? Like what is something old? That is being neglected. Doesn't have to be new, by the way. Right. So for instance, that led me to start

1:48:39 Five Friday in the newsletter. Ages ago. People are like, email's dead. Nobody's gonna use email anymore. Email's dead. You hear that every year. And that was particularly true when I launched Five boat Friday because

1:48:52 Social media, Snapchat. Ah, young kids are never gonna use email. And I was like, Well, that's true until they get a job. And then guess what? They're gonna use email. So in that particular case, I wasn't looking for the new new thing. I was looking for something old that was kinda neglected. And I wanted to also own my audience. So that led to you know millions of people for the newsletter. Yeah. So those are some of the questions that I ask. I think I've learned

1:49:13 For me personally, I make better decisions when it's a bit of a Venn diagram. If I go after any one of those, which could include profit, by the way, that's one that gets people. Boy, oh boy. I've succumbed to that too. Right if you're like What has the most leverage for revenue, profit, et cetera. That can lead you. in directions that

1:49:32 End up. Compromising. Well being end up compromising long term growth. End up compromising filling. Blank personal and professional and organizationally speaking. So Damn.

1:49:42 No, that was fi I mean, someone said to me recently like don't trade your nine to five for a twenty four seven. And it's like the cool part about entrepreneurship is that you can create a life you want, whether you you want to live in Austin, you want to live in Spain, you wanna live wherever, Tokyo. But it's then are you actually living the life you want? I think the the two comments that one comment, one question, I love that you said experiment. I mean you That was you know, kinda super early.

1:50:03 for you and and how you developed a lot of your stuff. And I think for a lot of people it's like oh well I gotta make this big decision. It's like, well, how can you test it right now? How can you just for really cheap? How can you test it and see if that's actually the case? So I love that you said that. Yeah. Other thing I was curious, when's last time you read

1:50:19 For our work week. You know You were talking about books you read that you come back to. I was like I wonder, you know, sometimes we come back to our own things. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was looking at Four hours a couple of weeks ago, actually. Yeah. Because my books I make I mean they reflect things that I am doing.

1:50:35 And have done, but they also act as references for me. Yeah, like I go back to the four hour chef all the time for various things. Four hour body, I go back to it all the time for various things. And for our work week in this particular case, because I'm thinking about virtual assistants. which have really up leveled in the last handful of years with technology and also different companies and types of training.

1:50:54 I've been thinking again about virtual assistants. And so I wanted to revisit like scripts, principles, et cetera because I've Shifted from VAs to in person full time. Yeah. And I'm experimenting again. I have a full time VA also on the payroll now.

1:51:11 And I wanted to revisit some of what worked in the past because very often the things that worked then are still gonna work. And the principles are the principles for a reason. The tactics, the tools, the platforms, the hardware devices, those all change, but

1:51:26 In terms of human communication, clarity, lack of clarity. The words are still words. So I wanted to revisit. Some of that. So as an example, I mean I've been thinking about going back to text. I've been thinking about going back to blog posts.

1:51:38 It's so antiquated. It's so out of fashion. And it's so high labor too. I mean, because that is something where I do not feel comfortable delegating if I'm putting my name to something. I want to be the one who has put those words on paper or on a screen in this case. But I've thought about it. I've thought about it quite a bit. We'll see. I mean that's a heavy lift. It is a heavy lift.

1:52:00 But That's also something I want to be aware of or cognizant of, and that is Am I doing this because it fits into the Venn diagram or am I doing it because it requires less work? Because requiring less work does not automatically mean elegant combination of things that leads to my goals, right? And if you don't have those KPIs like you mentioned. Watch out for vanity metrics too. Like

1:52:23 Okay, this matters, why does that matter?'Cause it leads to this. Okay, why does that matter? Why does it Because of this. Okay, because of this. Ultimately it's gonna come down to all right, you want this amount of money, okay, why do you want that money? Because I wanna trade it for this experience or this possession. Okay, why do you want those? Because you want this feeling. Okay, well let's keep that in mind. You wanna sleep all at night? Don't do all this other shit.

1:52:40 That is gonna cause you anxiety. And um Let's come back to Can I highlight what they're Two parts. One I wanna shout out for people looking for VAs. The side I use is hire mymom.com.

1:52:53 Really? Yeah. Okay. All right. Amazing. So hire my mom dot com. I'm not affiliated, no cuts, no nothing. They can sponsor my podcast or Tim's podcast. Uh but you basically it's moms who want to spend time with their kids that are super elite moms. Uh-huh. And they just don't want to work full time though. Yeah, yeah. And so you can basically get these super impressive parents at pretty affordable prices. So

1:53:16 I hired someone recently was the executive assistant for the Dallas Stars, the hockey team. Oh wow. Okay. Right. She has two kids, she wants to stay at home. She did quit last week. Telling you real, she quit. But but it's like you're finding that level of a caliber at I'll say because she's not working. She was three bucks an hour. Yeah. Which is insane. Yeah.

1:53:33 You know, for someone who's a really impressive woman. She is an executive assistant and she thought I was asking to do some assistant little work. So I asked her to schedule some appointments. I asked her to make some purchases and she's like, I just want to do the business work. And so I really admire and respect when people know what they want. I was a little frustrated'cause like, you quit all of a sudden abruptly, send me a voluntary termination letter.

1:53:54 I've never received one of those ever. But she's professional. Yeah. But you go back to it and and that's part of business. I think a lot of people do once and then they Like you go You know it doesn't work. It's like, Yeah, that's part of business. It's like okay, I'm gonna go and find another one and improve my process to understand like Hey, in the hiring process. you're gonna have to purchase something from a store.

1:54:12 Is that gonna bother you? Great. It doesn't? Okay, we can move you forward. My recommendation there? Yeah. Especially if you're considering a full time hire. Test them for a few months and have them do that stuff. Because people know how to interview and a lot of people will say, Absolutely, no task too small, no problem, and that's horseshit. In the same way that they say they're gonna buy whatever you're offering, ask them to pay you. Yeah. Then you know then you know it's real. So

1:54:36 Yeah. If you can try before you buy, especially on the EAVA in general. Hiring in general. Make them do some of the grunt work. Not grunt work, but just smaller things. And by the way, like anyone who's got real chops, right? It's kind of like Jean Paul DeJ, like putting the lotion on your hands, right? Like that guy has done every job. He's He's done every job. And uh

1:55:00 This isn't always gonna work, but it's You want someone with that same type of ethos. Yeah, right. We will. And I mean it's how we hire every almost every person happens to move as a contractor. To start. Yeah. And it's like, hey, we're gonna and even with my YouTube channel, I'm gonna pay you to do your trial video.

1:55:15 Great, you can see if you like me, maybe you hate me, maybe I don't like you, maybe we'll do like each other, but you're at least getting paid, so there's not really um as much downside for both of us. Yeah. The other thing I thought was really cool is looking back on our old lives. That you said. Looking back in your old work. I used to live in this really

1:55:28 Eight hundred square foot shitty house. And I went back at it. And then I also look back to my photos. Every month I do a month review. I look back on my photos and it's it's nice to look where we've been and where we are. So if you know, everyone I do a month review, you can literally just scroll up on your phone, go to your photo, scroll up really far.

1:55:43 And almost every time you're pretty proud of where you are now. So it's times we're frustrated. I went back to that old house and I I felt Wow, man, I'm so proud of where I am now. But I didn't really always notice that. I I do. But going back there helped that for sure.

1:55:55 Yeah, totally. Especially if you're used to looking ahead, right? Always forward. Yes. And you've developed a certain set of habits and attributes being in sixth year. Always being in the fast lane. It is a practice to augment that with other abilities. 100%. This is why a lot of people self destruct when they

1:56:16 quote unquote retire. If they're trying to go from like Autobahn to park. It's like, Well, hold on, maybe we should get used to some other gears. Let's see what happens. So let's talk about Tests. Let's talk about experiments. Let's talk about small steps. Million dollar weekend. Number one, what is the well here, let's do the subtitle. The surprisingly simple way to launch a seven figure business in 48 hours. So For people who

1:56:38 Fine this tantalising. I guess number one, why should they believe it? Let's start there. Like why the fuck should they listen? Because they're gonna come across A lot of promises, a lot of clickback on YouTube and then they click on it and they're like oh come on So why should they believe it? Maybe there's a case study or two or example you could share. And then if somebody wants to test drive something from this podcast, other things they can do. I've come up with simple rule because what's crazy on YouTube and podcast now, you can make whatever title up you want.

1:57:07 There's a people saying, Oh, I'm worth a hundred million. I'm like, really? You can just write that? And so don't trust any Author that has gotten rich from their any business author, I would say that's gotten rich from their book or their course.

1:57:19 I think that's a a pretty straightforward approach. Like if that's how they got rich, teaching you how they got rich, like Double check. I worked for Zuckerberg. Help start mint.com.

1:57:30 I helps our kickflip.com, helps our camba dot com. Somebody who has a very well grim mustache. Uh the my Latina girlfriend loves the mustache. I don't normally like it, but she's like, You gotta keep that. I was like Yes, baby. And uh you know, running appsuma.com. And so you can I'm not getting rich on the book, and I think that's a very simple test to think about who you want to listen to, specifically in business. Yep. And and secondly, can you see their businesses? Lotta times like oh I've got these businesses you'll never see.

1:57:57 Why not? Because Can't know about it. Why not? Yeah. You never get to the answer. That's probably why you don't ever have them on your shows. Now in terms of the surprisingly simple way

1:58:06 In that I'll just give you a case study of Jake. So Jake lives up north Texas. He's got three kids, got a day job. And he's had dreams, just like a lot of people have had, and he's had it for two years. I was like Jake. How do we change you in in forty eight hours? How'cause everyone has a weekend and now I'm about to have a family and I'm realizing like family, YouTube, book.

1:58:24 Prioritizing my partner and our kid. It's hard to have time to start a side hustle. It's hard to have time to like get going in The reality though is we do all have weekends. In effetti si va bene. So we can do something in a weekend, even if it's really small action. And by the way, it doesn't have to be a million in a weekend. It's through every weekend you compound it.

1:58:40 Over some time it can get there. Now The things that people can do in a weekend right now. This is the thing with books. I think your book is phenomenal. I if everyone gets two books, it's yours. for our work week and nine dollar weekend. Your book has such a great recipe.

1:58:53 Such a great recipe. But what I noticed when I've worked through my course, which I'm not gonna call it. I've worked through a course, ten thousand people have gone through it. YouTube channel, millions of people. You can give them the recipes, but they still may not do something. And I was kind of like What the fuck is going on?

1:59:07 Right? Like you have a big dream. You have a dream like, Hey, I wanna work here, I wanna ha make a thousand bucks a month, I want grocery money, I wanna Whatever it is. But then you haven't done nothing for two years, like Jade. And the reality is that most people are afraid of starting.

1:59:19 They're not ready. They feel they're not right. They're actually already. There's a lot of rich people who are really ordinary. I think people think it's all like, Oh no, I grew up in Silicon Valley and Tim did these things. Like, no, there's a lot of really normal people that are rich. But they all got started. And we got started over and like how many times you did brain quicken, you've done all these things, opening the kimono.

1:59:37 Yeah, yeah. You've done a lot of things. And so how do we overcome the fear of starting then? You could do that right now. That's why I asked people when we did it earlier, do the dollar challenge. Just get a dollar right now. Just go get going right now. And we surveyed just like you did with your book. And the number one takeaway from the book, by far

1:59:52 Was now not how. And I was like, what do you mean? Not uh. Like Yeah, no, you always just do right now. And like what do you mean? Just right fucking now.

2:00:00 What's the smallest action you can take that will get you momentum? So you want to be a content creator, post a video right now with your phone. My first YouTube video was with my phone. Just shirtless. In my little house, Adrian's Groffe House. You say shirtless? Yeah. Yeah, it's not impressive. It wasn't like rip shirtless. It was just like Sweaty just got off a bike in my spandex. I actually just watched the video a few weeks ago'cause I was like This true? And I was like, wow, it really? It's on the channel. And now my videos are, you know, give or take around thirty thousand dollars to make per video. Wow the salaries. Oh my god.

2:00:27 But that was a shirtless thing with an iPhone ten that that everyone can do right now. My most popular YouTube video of all time, and we're sitting here with like Pretty nice video setup. Got a basically a studio, the whole nine yards. My most popular YouTube video of all time is me in my kitchen, somebody with like God knows what kind of old phone. The resolution's terrible. De shelling hard boiled eggs without peeling. That was my most successful YouTube video of all time.

2:00:53 A bit sad about that. Yeah, how much effort goes into other things. But yeah. Yeah, dude. I mean, one of your favorite videos of mine is Microwaving Eggs. Yeah. We talked about last I love microwaves and I love microwaving my eggs. Sometimes I'll use a stove. My girlfriend's like, Let's use a stove, baby. See. So what can we do right now? Let me give you a great example as well. I'm a big pinballer. So I have two pinball machines at home. And this morning, literally, I was watching How to make a pinball machine.

2:01:16 By Godzilla, it's the number one rated pinball machine in the world. Sick, that's what I have it on. And You know, when most people think I want to start a pinball business, what do they think? Holy fuck, I've got a business machine. I've gotta go figure out software. I've gotta do oh I've gotta probably get a website, maybe on Shopify, shout out Shopify, they sponsor your podcasts. Which they'll you'll eventually need. Maybe I need a lawyer because I've got a patent idea.

2:01:37 And then that's six months, twelve months, two years of nothing. Now what's crazy, Stern Pinball, the number one maker of pinball machines. They put out this video behind the scenes of a gazilla. They literally took like a board and then bent some metal and just kinda threw the ball. You can do that right now. You could do that in one day and go to people.

2:01:52 Literally on your phone, in person. Hey, working on this pinball machine. Let me just let me show you to you right now. And see what you think. And you could get people to purchase your pinball machine before you spent six months, six years doing nothing. Same thing with the Cybertruck. Six years and barely it's getting delivered. And so There's things that people can start realizing.

2:02:09 Let me actually see if people really want this. And find out right away. So that that's really around surprisingly simple. It's like There's business models, there's all these things you can do. It's like Well if I only have a weekend and I don't have a lot of time, how do I break it down to the essence of the simplest form?

2:02:22 And so in terms of the book we're I think a lot of the breakthroughs happen is how do I get going right now? Like with the pinball machine or with Jake. Jake had a dream to do golf trips. He wants to do golf trips, like super bougie high end. And do you golf? I don't golf.

2:02:35 I have golfed, I wouldn't say I golf. Yeah, I don't golf. I like disc golf. Yeah. You know disc golf? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I'm a I'm a cyclist, but he he wants to do golf trips and so He's been thinking about it. It's when these people I'm sure you've noticed them, they'll like talk to you about a dinner. They're like, Oh man, I hate my job but I'd like to try this and so it's like all right, we have forty eight dollars, Shake. How do we actually do right now to see if other people want golf trips?'Cause that's what you think is a problem. Now, I think the best problems in business are your own.

2:03:01 Yeah, I agree. Like your show really I mean if you think about it, you getting to talk to people you want. That's what it is. Yeah, that that's a problem you have about learning different areas of business, science, health, fitness. And then you publish it and make a lot of money doing that? Like how cool is that? No best job ever. Dude, it's a sweet work. It's super sweet. So in terms of the book, it's one, how do we just get going fucking right now? Right now. And then giving people more momentum stories, actions like the dollar challenge, now not how.

2:03:25 Freedom number Which is understanding. What is the number you need to quit your job? For me it was three thousand. Did you have a number? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, slightly different moniker, but same idea, like target monthly income. Which was not just the replacement, it was a bit more

2:03:39 part of this exercise called dreamlining, but Oh yeah, yeah. Exactly. But very similar idea. Totally. More like figure out the basic math. Because maybe you need less. Very often you need less than you think you need. I live in Barcelona. I think our apartment's a thousand dollars. It's not huge, to be clear, but it's like you can live actually a lot cooler life than you think for a lot more affordable than you realize. Yeah.

2:03:59 So part one is around that. And then we can get into the recipe and I think you know the for our work recipe is fire. You know, I shout out you in the book and and honor how you approach it. That as one way. But even before that, it's how do you understand the upside of asking? And how do you become an asking machine? How do you build an asking muscle?

2:04:14 Yeah. So what did Jake do? So Jake, I mean, first off, we did the coffee challenge. So we drove over to Taco Deli. And I was like, All right, Jake, let's go ask for ten percent off. He's like uh he just done sales before, he's like it's easy. It's always easy until you do it. And then guess what? It's it's not as hard as he thinks. And that that's really true for a lot of life. We're afraid of things.

2:04:30 And you know, this every almost every time we face the hard thing. It's never so hard to thought like ayahuasca for me. Part of it I was so afraid, and thank you for giving me time and coaching me around it before I went in. But a lot of ayahuasca was just like facing something hard. More than all the other stuff. It was just like it's so chall for me, it felt so challenging and being able to overcome it.

2:04:48 Same thing with the coffee challenge. Just go do it today. Commit to doing right now for yourself. So Jake did it, bam. Just to be clear, I wouldn't do the uh take ayahuasca today as a translation of that. Coffee challenge. Coffee challenge. Then Jake did the dollar challenge. Skip dollar. And he was so nervous, but then he was like, Wow, I haven't done shit in two years. In literally in like six hours, he already had a lot of momentum. Now, once you kinda get practice on those different things, really the book breaks down into two parts, which is how do you build and find something that people are excited to give you money for? Now that you're better at starting and asking, All right, let me start swinging. So

2:05:19 It's thinking about okay, how do I come up with ideas? How do I see if there's a million dollar in money I can make on it? Check out a one minute business model. And then the third part grow it is like Finding social media for customers, email to actually As you were saying, sell them and communicate with them. And then the growth machine, which is the playbook I use at mint.com and appsuma.com, YouTube, the book, it's the same marketing playbook I use over and over.

2:05:38 And then these are all things, by the way, people are like, Oh, I want it more complicated and I need it it's like Forty eight hours. And you know this, like by having these limitations bring out a lot more creativity, bring out a lot more resourcefulness. Yeah, I mean I I would go so far as to say like This is gonna be a broad statement, but like the best creativity comes from constraints. You need constraints.

2:05:58 Those sound bad. They sound like restraints, like you're strapped into you know electroshock therapy or something, but You need constraints and Weekend is a constraint. Less than a hundred dollars is a constraint. Two hours is a constraint. These are all four hour work week. Four hour work week. Like these right, which is a constraint. It's a constraint. And how is it an advantage? I think most people think I don't have money. It's like that's a great thing.

2:06:21 Okay, what do you do now that you don't have money? Okay, how can you make it happen? And then you realize like, Oh, maybe there's something here for the just like a pinball machine, which is crazy. Like, no, you need to you need to build it, engineer No. Take a piece of wood, then some metal, see if you can get a f three people. I generally say three people on the weekend. If you can get three customers, to me that's validation. Meaning that this is something that you can invest in. That's it. You can do that in forty eight hours. And I think people Give themselves so much time and so many excuses. That's why the book starts with frequently made excuses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frequently made excuses, yeah. To be able to get them past that so they can get going on their journey. Yeah, totally. And uh there's so many examples of

2:06:55 Low stakes, low cost. Say prototyping, right? I'll just mention one guy, people can look him up, Stephen Key, fascinating guy. And he has licensed Tons of Toys to huge manufacturers. And so his game is licensing, right? He's not actually in the venturing business. He's not in the manufacturing and the distribution business. He comes up with ideas. It's like this is a great game and he sells it to

2:07:21 Hasbro or whoever might be these huge companies. He uses construction paper, some glue. Scotch tape. He'll prototype it, take some photos of how it might work. And then off to the races he goes. And he just does that over and over and over and over again. There's a lot of examples of this like Airbnb how sixty billion, hundred billion dollar company? That literally started on a weekend. They posted to some design conference, like, hey, we have a couch. Does anyone want it?

2:07:46 There wasn't some fancy website, there was no Mark and Dreeson funding, there was none of that. And now that's a hundred billion dollar business. So the thing that we we talked about a long time ago is that You only need to get lucky once. But to get lucky you have to be doing things consistently every single weekend to eventually get to that point.

2:08:01 I think people miss out on that. So once Jake had a little bit of Movement. So Taco Deli. Et cetera.

2:08:10 What happens then? For someone like a Jake. Doesn't need to be Jake, but like for someone like a Jake. Let's let's break it down. I think the more concrete tactical. I know that that's what we both appreciate. So now it's like okay, well what do I sell? And so again, there's a lot of different ways. I'll just give you one. Literally just make a list of your day, do breakfast, lunch, dinner, and try to write everything that sucked. So for you right now, you've already told me one.

2:08:29 Finding a VA. EA. Yeah. Opportunity. Jake, his different ones, he has kids, so toys. He found it really annoying to that his kids get older. Now to find toys. He's like ah shit, I need to get rid of these toys and get new ones. Maybe there's a toy rental business. Oh.

2:08:43 It's kinda cool. Well, I mean, look at Check for textbooks, right? Huge business. Check for toys. Doesn't exist. So if someone does that sorry, He didn't end up doing it. But it was going through different problems that he was excited to solve for himself. He had a coffee problem. And what he stumbled upon was that he went on a golf trip with guys A year ago and he was like, I really love that. I want more of that in my life.

2:09:01 I wanna have something to look forward to on the calendar. And I didn't want to do that business. I want to do the toy rental. So one additional approach I'll throw in there'cause it's actually how I started And the first business sports nutrition, et cetera, which Is where I cut my teeth for all the things that followed, but

2:09:17 I as part of my calculus I went through all my credit card statements. And at the time I was making I don't know, like base salary was like forty grand a year in the Bay Area during like one of the peak rushes. It was it was partially explains why I was eating Jack in the Box. Like with California taxes and like rent and stuff it was like gone before you know it. So I went through my credit card statements and I Looked at what I spent a lot of money on. Like what did I spend a lot of money on disproportionate to my income. And that's how I landed on sports nutrition in part. I also had

2:09:49 Some knowledge around it and The ability to Find people involved with that. But Another

2:09:55 approach I've heard from several different entrepreneurs who ended up building huge businesses is they they looked at where they were cobbling together solutions. Like where are they paying for multiple things? or using multiple things to McGyver some half ass solution to a problem that they have. Opportunity. Yeah.

2:10:14 Yeah. Another one I've liked. And to be clear, you can have that. And then still there's no business there. So we did that. We try to compete with Clavio in e commerce and we were cobbling together so what they do. They're MailChimp or Convert Kit, but just for e commerce. I see.

2:10:27 Mm. And so we cobbled together a solution and we're like, Oh, we could sell this to people. And then when we tried to sell it, no one wanted to buy it. Yeah. And that's what we get to later in the book. And so I think the other comment I would actually highlight that it's great you called it out. Is what's on your to do list?

2:10:40 that you're just avoiding doing. That is actually a really interesting business. So for you Your to do list is to find an EA. What else is on your to do list that's maybe been there over two weeks? Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Let me think about that for a second.

2:10:52 Yeah, what is. I can tell you one of mine. Yeah, let's do one of yours. Fuck, dude. I need a house manager. Yeah.

2:10:59 Just title property stuff. My painting fell, my grass died because I put my car over it. It didn't get watered. I have a coal plunge that needs to get refilled. And I have my girlfriend who's pregnant, so I'm taking care of her and prioritizing her. I don't have time to even find the house manager. Yeah. So there's one.

2:11:15 So in the case of an if a better example exists that we want to run with, but let's since we've introduced Jake. Yeah, we can stick with Jake. And we can also do the VA one, but Jake's thing was I want to do golf. Let's stick with that. Next up, is it a million dollars of money that you can make in that? So how big is the market? Over what period of time? Year or what period of time? I'm more just looking at the market. I'm not necessarily looking at a time frame on that. It's just like are there people now? Today. that at least a million dollars. Like I would literally what's crazy is absolutely a success.

2:11:42 I would say is it's significantly because the market just grew. We chose a great market. Yeah. When I started there's ten software products, now there's t at least ten thousand software products. If not more.

2:11:51 And so we chose the right market. So with Jake, he was basically there's two ways you can do it. One just look at Google Trends, which is super basic. Everyone most people know this. Like is Google Trends is a flat declining is a growing. And look at relatively. Mm-hmm. In terms of search terms, right? Go to trends.google.com and just double check it. And this is again, this is almost identical to the blog post we had. It's just been evolved. On your blog, on Tempers blog.

2:12:11 For our workweek dot com. And then the second part is all right, is there a million people or not even a million people, how many people and how much do they spend on this? Same thing with Chihuahuas. How many people have challenged, how much do they spend on chos. So for Jake, it's How many people are golfing? How much do they spend on golf? And can you get any other data points, but that's probably this most straightforward way,'cause again, we only do it on a weekend.

2:12:28 To see is there at least a million dollars in there. Golf is a billion dollar industry. Multiple billions of dollars. So you can look at the clubs, you can look at things, but simplest way to do it, go on Facebook. Do an ad. How many people Searching golf.

2:12:40 And then you can Google how much do people spend on golf a year. Okay, is there at least a million dollars in there I can make an it? I would imagine at this point too, I'm just throwing this out there, but that some of these tools like Chat GPT or Bard could also be incredibly. Hundred percent. How much money do people spend on golf a year, how big is the market on golf, you could put that in right now. And again, people are like, Well, I need to do more research. It's like No, we really just want to understand like generally. 'Cause we only have a weekend. Otherwise that's the thing that okay, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, ten weeks and nothing's happened.

2:13:08 So next up. How do we actually understand what the business model looks like? Again, not I went to Berkeley, went to Princeton, like there's all these complicated discounted clash flows. You've done a lot more investing than I have. I just wanna know Can I make a million dollars in the business? So the real simplest business model is one minute.

2:13:23 Revenue, cost, expense, divided by a million. And I have a bunch of templates on the website, but really again, I'm trying to understand. Is this realistic? Trying to sell a business at that. Let's say a golf trip, that's what he was excited about.

2:13:34 Five thousand dollars. It's like three thousand to do it, two thousand. Can I sell this many golf trips and how long will that take me? help him adjust the business model. Like when I did Sumo Jerky And even when I've done App Sumo, I had to do the same change. When we did have sumo, I did bundles.

2:13:48 Remember? I do. Yeah,'cause you're productivity model, you helped put it on the map. We did these bundles and I was like, dude, I'm doing fucking two months of work, sell them for fifty bucks, I made five dollars. Andrew Chen came and he's like a math genius and he's one of my best friends. He's like, Let's just do this quick model. And that's what we've replicated. Stop doing bundles, just do one.

2:14:07 And do one a week. H what's the margin? I went from five dollar margin to twenty five dollar margin. Can you say that one more time? Yeah. So let me back up. So when you're doing these quick models, and again, I don't want people to spend a lot of time, people like it's so simple. I'm like, that's the point. Have a one minute, but like The vast majority.

2:14:23 of incredibly profitable, elegant businesses. Are simple. Yeah. Right. Yeah at their very core. They're simple. Beautiful. At their core. Like Google. At its core.

2:14:37 I know there's a lot of complexity that goes into delivering it, but as a business model. Very straightforward. Uber at its core. Very straightforward. Airbnb at its core, very straightforward. And

2:14:51 Patrone, right? I mean like at their core these businesses are Geico even, right? Like very Simple. And one thing I wanna take a step back on is entrepreneurship is awesome. It can create a great life for you. And that doesn't mean you have to be a millionaire. That could be even grocery money and I don't think people realize they can change their life and have that option. Like I was fired.

2:15:08 You've been fired? Yeah, for my first job. Fired. Ice cream shop. You have to like try to get fired there. Well, it's actually kinda funny. I mean my first job says the way this guy was doing stuff, the big boss.

2:15:20 I was like fourteen. I don't even know if it was legal, but I was working at this ice cream shop and I was the cleaner. So I was cleaning the machines and doing this that and the other thing. And the way that I was taught to do it made absolutely no fucking sense. So I came up with my own system for cleaning and I did it in like one tenth the time. The mistake I made was I stayed at work for the rest of the time and I read Black Belt magazine and I took the broom handle off of like one of the mops and I practiced. karate moves or something in the parking lot and the boss understandably didn't find that terribly inspiring. And so he was like

2:15:52 I don't care if you already cleaned it, clean it again. Now's good as clean. And That was early proof that I'm effectively uh unemployable. So yeah, I got fired. I would agree with I I'm sure I maybe I got fired from other stuff, but I definitely got fired from the first job. I was trying to wish I could see that, dude. I wish you could have like some cameras and I could see you with your broomstick. There's a good chance I had a rat tail or a mullet, too.

2:16:12 There's a very high likelihood that I had a rat till or a mullet at the time. My point of going back and we'll we'll stick with the Jake example is that I was fired. And that was one of the most traumatic of my life. And then I was like, I'm never fucking again gonna be dependent on someone. Yeah, yeah, ever fucking again.

2:16:26 And so I at that moment was very clear, like I need to get to my own level of It's taken thirty years to It's taken therapy to It has. I mean therapy's been amazing thing. Oh, I get it. I'm laughing because also I get it. Yeah. Like but that was a realization that like one person determined my fate. Yeah. I never wanted that again. Yeah. And so Doesn't mean you have to quit like what's crazy to have sumo, do we have a lot of people with really interesting side hustle. Amy does flowers. She's she heads our customer support. Nick has our growth. He has a teeth whitening clinic.

2:16:54 Amazing. Yeah. Ollman and his wife have a facial clinic. I don't know. But at least they have the option. They seem to like their jobs with Appsimo, but they have the option. That they can do that. And that's why I do think people should consider it no matter what they're doing. So it does take time to kinda get to these places. Like I didn't get my first sell it up single was twelve bucks. Yesterday was two hundred thousand, but that did me getting going be able to do that. And I'll throw this in there too, that

2:17:16 Much like Despite everything that I've said and the frickin' Ted talk that I gave earlier about all the things I'm thinking about, despite all of that, I still think everybody should start a podcast. Because you will learn a lot about yourself and your own thinking. you will need to get better at communicating.

2:17:33 And there's a lot to be taken from that, even if you stop it after five episodes. Right. So I still believe that for improving your ability to communicate, identifying verbal ticks. Cleaning up your thinking. By going through that process. makes it worth starting a podcast. Similarly, I think everybody should start a business. Does not mean everybody should be a lifelong entrepreneur.

2:17:54 There are upsides to nine to five. The ability to just like turn off your work, go home, like throw on the T V or watch some YouTube and like Have a couple of beers with your friends or family like There are arguments to be made that that In the right circumstances. I'll tell you like Monday w we have a lawsuit because someone doesn't like something, two people are upset about their salary. That was Monday. Yeah, right, right. I'm just saying like there's trade off. I was at this rock climbing gym not too long ago. Last week.

2:18:20 Actually here in Austin. Lot of good rock climb gyms. There's a new one, Mesa Rim, that is much taller in terms of their top roping areas than anything else I've seen here. In any case. I was there and I saw this woman climbing and she had a shirt on that said no solutions, only trade offs. And I looked at it and I said, Okay, maybe that doesn't make sense. Maybe it's like a Japanese billboard, who knows? It like seems like English, but it's not quite like it's grammatical. They're English words, but wait a second, like Bear is the best friend? Wait a second, what does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. But I sat with it and I was like, you know what, that's actually

2:18:53 a very healthy way to look at a lot of decisions. So There is no one best. Like there are there are always trade offs. So Coming back to Jake. Jake and

2:19:06 Business model. How did you tackle this? And it can be Jake, it can be other examples, but to the extent that you can give real world examples. Alright, so let me give you two examples. One Jake and one you know, very clear as well with Appsumo. So Jake's with Andrew Chen when he came in and modified it. So that was one example. The other example And I'll show you the there's dials, you know, kinda like remeats with your finance dials. There's revenue dials in your business. And so with Jake, he was like, I'm gonna do ten percent profit. I was like, okay, hold on. Let's look at a one minute model, see what you can actually make and how you can make a million dollars doing this.

2:19:36 So we put it into the woman and model and again, it's very simple. You don't have a lot of time. Revenue. Cost profit. So let's be specific, Jake. I was like Jake, how much can people pay? And again, we're let's just try to see what we can put together as an offer that we'll bring to people.

2:19:49 How much you pay on your golf trip before? I spent two thousand. What do you think is reasonable for a forty eight hour amazing experience for people to go golfing? Four thousand. Great, four thousand. Now what are the costs that go with that? Do you have to pay for travel? No. Make them pay for travel. Okay. Hotel Golf, whiskey, cigars, food.

2:20:04 Great. How much is that? Just real quick. Two thousand bucks. So Your old model was like you took a percentage, but now we just do a one minute model. It looks like you're making like two to three thousand dollars, let's just call it twenty five hundred per each golf trip.

2:20:16 Divided by a thousand, that's not that many sales. That seems actually very doable to create a million dollar business. Just having golf trips. So just by understanding that it's like okay, cool, we have an idea we like. We see that there's a million dollars'cause a lot of times you're gonna work really hard in the wrong direction or in a market that's really small. And you actually understand that this is a business model relatively that can work now.

2:20:34 We talked about revenue dials. Let's just say the average order value, like people are gonna pay one thousand. Holy shit, that's never gonna get there. That's a thousand people during the seller. Is it a thous yeah, a thousand people. That's a lot of people. So if we can five X that, maybe we make it more expensive.

2:20:49 Can we get people to buy it twice? Is there another types of products? And I I've written down the revenue dials in the book and there's free on the website as well that you can be like, How can I change this model? So that it's easier to get to the million dollars. So people can find some of these resources for free at million dollarweekend.com. Totally. And Now with that, it was like, Oh, okay, cool. If it's twenty five hundred dollars, I don't have to sell that many people. to get to a million dollar business. Now let me see if I'm gonna get even just three customers today.

2:21:13 And I will tell you at this point of the day, Jake was really frustrated. 'Cause we had no sales. You know, we finished this model and it's like shit, man, like I don't know. Like I don't know if this is gonna work. And I think that one of the most powerful things you can do is go for a walk. And that's all we did. It was like Jake. For two years you've thought about this idea.

2:21:29 For two years you've wondered what if? And you want to be an example to your kids. And in twenty four hours so far, you have an idea. You have a business model around it. And now we can actually find out if we can make a real business out of this. And I think that's just kind of amazing for all of us. Like how can we change our lives in a very quick amount of time and give yourself a fucking break if it's not immediately a million dollars. Like go for a walk. Get a good night's sleep.

2:21:51 Go look at old photos to realize how far we've come. So the next morning woke up. And Well we w did within I don't know, an hour as he put together with on a ghoul Doc.

2:22:01 Pictures of a golf trip. Golf course. Food, cigars. I don't know if people do golfing. Clothing, polo shirts. And then a price. Four thousand bucks, five thousand bucks. I was like, All right, cool, let's just call people.

2:22:15 So there's three different validation methods to see if people want to have a business. And number one is pre selling. This is one of the most popular devices. See if people will purchase. Yeah. So you have an offer. He literally put together Google Doc because I I do think it's nice when you sell something that you can get people like, Oh wow, I can visualize it. I can see it. Same thing that Elon's done with Cybertruck model three. Those are six years and ten years before we actually delivered.

2:22:35 Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them. So it's a very effective model. Same thing with airplanes, hotels, they all pre sell. To see if someone wants it. I mean we're looking around here, like the vast majority of these were sold before construction It was finished, certainly, but often before construction started. A hundred percent. And when you're doing businesses

2:22:54 Find a problem you're excited about. As you said with your stuff, like If you only do that and make sure that no one else wants it, you don't really have a business. You have a hobby. So Jake has that.

2:23:03 The other thing I think is a super common mistake for new entrepreneurs is like, well I wanna do AI. I'm like okay. I love yeah I'm like Have you used Chat G? Not really. Have you coded anything? No, not at all.

2:23:17 Use uh What do you do? What's your day job? I'm in sales. Okay, what do you sell? I sell solar.

2:23:24 Okay. Maybe. It's easier for us to start a business selling. And you can sell AI. And do something within your zone of influence and your zone of expertise versus so far outside of it. People make it way more complicated on themselves, especially new entrepreneurs. Like what are problems you like?

2:23:38 What are groups or zones of influence you have? Doesn't mean you can't. But just makes it so much harder. And so Jake he he plays a lot. Play no golf. He has a lot of girlfriends, so the pre sell method makes he also knows how to find those people, right? Like he knows what

2:23:51 Which websites he goes to. He knows Which celebrities he follows. He knows where to go fishing. Yeah. I don't well what's a golf course. And he has more credibility in selling it too. If he's like this is the trip that I have always wanted to design for myself. There's a lot of weight behind that when you're talking to someone.

2:24:09 Yeah, it was cool. It was cool to see him excited to create a business around that. And there's some f Some mistakes that he ended up making that ever others can avoid. That I'll cover. But through that it was like all right, Jake, you have a doc. You got a model. Let's contact these people.

2:24:22 Let's just call them right now. You already practiced it. Remember in the beginning we talked about starting? You got started. I'm gonna start asking. And he called his brother and be like nah, my brother, like it's too easy. It should be easy. Make it fun.

2:24:34 Like No, it's gotta be hard, I gotta make it challenging myself. Like why? Why do you want to make it hard on yourself? What's the advantage in that? Because that avoids you actually facing reality. So he called his brother and his brother's like and again we talked about that listen option transition. Hey man, I need feedback. I'm doing this process. I'm trying to start a business in a weekend.

2:24:50 Do you remember the golf trip we went on? It's like yeah, how did you like it? Oh, I liked it. Is there anything you missed on it? Would you want to do it again? Do you have another one scheduled? Oh you don't? Oh.

2:24:59 So you're listening to see if you what problems they have. Then you provide an option. Hey, I've got a golf trip. It's gonna be in April. It's gonna be to this place, it's gonna be five thousand bucks. And it sounds like something you'd be excited to do.

2:25:09 Transition. Do you want to give me a hundred dollars right now as a deposit? That's totally refundable. For this trip. And then shut the fuck up. His brother sent him a hundred dollars right away.

2:25:19 Okay. Brother fine. Easy. Jake who else have you golf with? Let's make a dream ten list. Of everyone you've ever golfed with. Just ten.

2:25:27 Super easy. This is inspired by Chet Holmes, so I gotta give him a shout out. Ultimate Sales Machine, one of my favorite books of all time. And He has a dream hundred. I'm like hundreds a lot. Let's just do ten.

2:25:37 We only got a weekend. So then let's just go through your list. Who else plays golf with you? Who else have you gone on a trip with? I went on a guy named John. Calls up John and actually we corded the calls. He's like, Yeah, fuck you, John I'm like, That's how you talk to your friends. But they're friends.

2:25:50 And then he calls John. He's like, Yeah, man, can I just get your feedback? Cause again, when you're selling, don't have to make this big scary thing. Talk to someone. Hey, I'd love to get your feedback. This is what I'm working on. Is that something you're interested in? You are? Okay, cool. Do you want to give a deposit to to commit that you're actually serious about doing it? Because a Promise of a deposit is a rejection.

2:26:08 A promise. Hey, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Just uh when you get closer, that's rejection that's actually a no. You know this. You've sold a lot. You've done a lot of this. And so Getting them to actually tell you the truth with their wallet. And for me a lot of times with rejection, it's do I actually want to do this business?

2:26:22 Do I actually want to make this thing possible? And so it's a test if you want something. That's it. And so when you're getting rejected, be like As I'm doing this book and as I'm doing other things, even with asking people for on my YouTube videos. Do I really want this? I'm like, Fuck yes, I do.

2:26:35 Do you want the thing that is being rejected? Am I proud of what am I doing? Like is this the thing I actually believe I want to do? And that rejection is just a test for yourself. And everyone can pass. It's up to them to choose. And Yeah, those are also like those early rejections are valuable because if you're Commitment starts to waver. You're still in the honeymoon phase.

2:26:53 If I are gonna have hard Challenges. You are going to have hiccups later. And if it's not gonna work, like if you are gonna waver or you might fold, it's better to do it. Super quick. Early.

2:27:06 Then later. And you're really For me getting rejected is an opportunity to learn. And this is what I do in sales, I do this all the time.

2:27:14 To this day, I'll just say I just want to learn. And I frame it, that's not the first phrase. Second phrase is you didn't want this, just tell me why not. I want to learn. People will reply. And I'll tell you. Really? Yeah, they just do it.

2:27:23 I don't think people are like, No, I won't wanna tell this person why not and a lot of times after they say why they didn't do something You can answer that question and sell'em again. So Jake. Called John, he makes fun of this guy, so forth and then Hey man.

2:27:36 I have an idea of this golf trip. I love your feet. Dude, that sounds awesome. Yeah, it's an April Do you want to do a deposit? Another deposit. And then he ended up getting, I believe, five deposits. Within forty eight hours, for five hundred bucks.

2:27:47 And then he also had a partnership with another guy that he went on a trip with. And now three weeks later he's like securing the location, he's getting the five thousand dollars or whatever the end up price is gonna be. Along the way. Now there's some interesting things around this.

2:28:00 So one and this is mistakes that people make. You have to deliver what you just promised. So focus on that. You just promise like, Hey, give me a deposit and let me take you on an amazing golf experience. So overdeliver on what you just promised. Common mistake that Jake was making. He came back to me, I checked in on him. He's like, dude, I these people are buying it. It's exciting. I'm gonna get eight people. Here's the model. It looks great. One guy talked to me about an app. So I'm gonna start an app. Oh boy. And I was like squirrel. Yeah. That's a good movie. By the way, I I love squirrel. Until the Titans I put squirrel as my favorite animal. And so they're very easy to get distracted.

2:28:34 Very easy to get distracted. And this is the the best businesses are the ones that work. And something like Jake, you just sold five people. Another mistake that very, very common. You know, I don't know about these trips'cause I don't think I want to go on them in a few years. I was like, dude, you haven't even gone on one. Yeah. Guess what? You know how much work I do at Absumo day to day? Zero.

2:28:53 I don't do any work. And that's not as like a flex like I don't do any work. No, I hire the people that do the work and they're excited and frankly they're better than me at the work. You don't ever have to go on a trip. Maybe for a podcast, if you're the signature host and it's called the Tim Fair show. You probably need to be doing it, unless they AI your voice. But for these golf trips, don't be so worried about making a million when you haven't made one. Just deliver the product. And guess what? Then do it again. And then again, and then again. And so that was another common observation I was surprised, and I've seen it by others. Uh is how's it gonna scale? You haven't gotten a dollar, don't worry about scale. Don't worry about it. Yeah. And let's deliver the experience, which now he's getting it going in April. He's getting these people to pay.

2:29:28 And then it's like, hey, just after they pay in April, do you know what you do? You just do it again. And then again, and then again. And then the rest of the book is now How does he get it beyond that so it can be beyond his his network and his zone of influence? Also, just to emphasize a few things. That you've said and also

2:29:43 Maybe just add a couple of comments, right? The whole scaling thing, look, I invest in businesses that scale. But I think that what a lot of entrepreneurs

2:29:54 Especially if they're fantasizing about doing something big. Like if it's not huge, it's a failure. If it's not 10x, it's a failure. If it's not the site paradigm shifting. Most businesses that help Their owners to craft Unique lives that are incredibly rewarding are completely invisible to you. Mm. The businesses that you see

2:30:15 On magazine covers or In these tweet threads. And so on. X threads. Whatever the cool kids are calling it these days.

2:30:26 are outliers and trying to just model those crazy outliers is like deciding for New Year's you want to get into shape. So you watch the Super Bowl and you're like okay. So I'm watching how Tom Brady moves. And if I can't be Tom Brady, then it's not exercise. And you're like, well, hold on a fucking second. Not the right way to look at it. Chances are also you're not Tom Brady. Right. So Maybe before you're like, it's not worth me learning to swim unless I can be

2:30:59 Michael Phelps, you're like, Well, look at his ankles. You're can your ankles do that? No. Like I don't think so. Are you shaped like that? No, you're not. So Just reminding folks, like you do not need to mimic the top one percent of one percent of one percent of outliers who probably are mutants on a bunch of levels. In order to have a business that fulfills

2:31:19 the dreams you have associated with being an entrepreneur. I just want to say that because it's so common. It's really common. And what you've been saying also echoes something that Seth Godin has said on the podcast, which is And I'm paraphrasing here. But effectively like do the smallest thing possible. He's like people hide behind the big. Because when they have this like I wanna do an AI app that does this and this and this, which isn't to say those things can't exist.

2:31:45 But when they've got this huge idea, I wanna help Five billion people, whatever the thing might be. You can hide behind that and never get started. It's easy to hide behind the big thing. But if it's call five of your friends, you can't hide behind that. I mean business really is three W is what I look at it. It's what's a problem you're solving that people care about.

2:32:05 Who are those people and where are they? That's it. What's the problem that people care about? So for Jake, it's a golf trip. For Apps who want to comment software deals at good prices. For Tim Ferris who's learning like very Tim Ferris shows very tactical, practical things in different areas of your life.

2:32:19 Mm-hmm. Where do people listen to that? Then where are they? And It has been awesome to see someone like Jake who's had that dream be able to make that change. There are other validation methods I'll just share because I think people want to see other ones. So one is pre sell.

2:32:31 So whether it's a pinball machine which we talked about, whether it's even appsumo.com. I was able to get this going within a weekend as well. The same exact method. It wasn't even freestyle, I was able to close it all in forty eight hours, so Just to share another ex story of that. I

2:32:44 noticed through all of my work that I was like, I like deals, I like marketing. And I think the software thing's gonna be big. How do I do this? very quickly to find out if this is something people actually want. And that's the reason you have weekend,'cause you have fifty two chances to change it.

2:32:57 If it doesn't work one, guess what? You have another one. And another one. And at least understand a process. You're so good at this. You're so good at thinking about that. So how do I experiment? And so with absolute, I was like, I think there's something with these three things. Let me try to do in a weekend. I cold emailed. MJ. This college kid.

2:33:11 Said, Hey, I wanna do software, I'll pay seven dollars for everyone I sell. For him he's like I'll get free money, that's cool. So cold email. It was just And it's funny I how did you find the college kid to called email? Because I went to Imjur.com. Oh sorry. Yeah. No no not around. Some like name from Azerbaijan. Okay, Imjur. No, no, no, no. The website.com. So I knew that the problem with software deals at good prices.

2:33:32 I knew that I'm a Redditor and I was like, Well that's who where the customers are and then That's who the customers are and where they are. And I was like, they want Imjur. That was the most popular product at the time. That was all over it. So basically cold emailed Alan, just Alan at MJ dot com. It was like, Hey, I wanna promote you, seven dollars per deal. You get free money.

2:33:50 No cost to you. And then I was like, Well, I can get this posted on Reddit. And I even Cold emailed the founders of Reddit. And was able to get them to give me free ads. Yeah, how did you do that? So curiosity.

2:34:01 I know why would they give you free ads I don't really know, actually. That's bullshit. No. Now what was the pitch though? The pitch is twofold. One I said I knew someone they knew. So I worked with Chris Smoke.

2:34:11 When I started previous companies, he knew Chris slow. Sweet for smoke system. So when you're sending an email, it's really strong subject line or any messages like referred by blah. At least you're gonna get an open or reply. And by the way, don't bullsh that'cause you'll get fact checked.

2:34:25 I just got someone fact checked with me, like Jordan Hart you know Jordan Harbinger Yeah. He's a good buddy of mine. He fact checked someone who messaged him like Hey Noah Kagan's working with you me and Jordan messages me. Immediately. Yeah, I was like, No, I'm not. Yeah. It was a little bit more than that. Basically I said, Hey, I'd love to just treat you to lunch and share more what I'm working on. And so I took him to a pork store cafe in in hate. And I just shared what I was working on and said

2:34:46 I'm doing this idea for software deals. I wanna focus on Reddit. I'm a huge Reddit, I've been Reddit since two thousand six. It's inger I'd love to see if you can give me free ads. There wasn't a bigger ass than that. Again, we come back full circle. It's uh because it you know, I like asking, I practice asking, everyone can ask. He's like sure.

2:35:01 Crazy part of that story, fast forward about six months. I asked him again. And he's like ten thousand dollars. Yeah. But I highly appreciate Chris and and Reddit for giving me that free it was they were just getting their ad platform out. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's a good chance. Okay. That was a good chance for them.

2:35:18 To showcase something, or have a case study. That it worked well. So I launched it, I was like if I can do two hundred sales, this is obviously a little bit bigger than what I'm encouraging others. If I can get 200 sales within a very short time, this is it. And let me just break down the website. I paid forty eight dollars to a guy Muhammad who I can still recommend to people.

2:35:34 To help me put a PayPal button on Appsumo.com and I spent twelve dollars on Appsuma.com. Which w I know, I should have maybe done even not the website. But that PayPal button. People would and I post on Reddit Hey, I've got a deal on MGR Pro, instead of twenty four dollars, it's twelve. And I gave Allen seven dollars. Immediately. That first twelve dollars that was the best, dude. Yeah. That was so sweet. And I remember and this is the thing people were like, Well, how do I scale?

2:35:55 I emailed. The codes for every two hundred person. Do you know what my back end was? Gmail. Yeah. I got the PayPal notification and then I sent him an email saying, Thank you so much. Here's your code for Imjur Pro. What other deals do you want me to get?

2:36:07 And that is what's led now to like a hundred percent team and we have all these crazy products. We've launched On so many different things from Map Similar. We have Think a twenty twenty five person engineering team. It started with literally manual Gma codes. And so the concept there is just how so fucking basic.

2:36:22 I didn't let all these other things get in the way. Yeah, and also That Super primitive back. And that you're talking about.

2:36:30 Highly manual, but high touch with the customer. Yes, yes. Gives you a lot of really valuable input. And Even though we've been talking about The word scale is kind of a four letter word. In one of the very first episodes of Masters of Skill. that Reed Hoffman did. He interviewed Brian Cheske of Airbnb.

2:36:49 And it's a great episode, and one of the key tenets In the beginning for Airbnb was do things that don't scale. And Those things tended to be highly manual. Helping people take photographs of their places.

2:37:03 And what they learned then led to A lot of what we've seen. I mean even think about yourself. I hope I recall correctly. I thought you super responded to everyone super early on. I r recall you in the comments on your blog. Oh, in the comments when I was building that community for sure. And this I was highly responsive in the blog comments. You were. I remember that. It stuck out to me. And that's exactly if people were like, Well, how do I like have high touch and how do I do things that go? That is literally it. So for me on YouTube

2:37:29 I still reply to my comments. Not every single one now, because there's a lot. But I reply to them. And guess what? When you get that message That someone actually connected with you. And this is great, especially if you're at one, two, three, four, five customers. So early on, I don't know if I've talked about this at all. When I had decided that bloggers were the path.

2:37:45 At least that was the hypothesis worth testing for launching the four hour work week. I went to A bunch of their blogs and I left comments and my comments were like blog posts unto themselves. I mean they were They took forever. Right.

2:37:59 I put a ton of energy in and I would do that in some cases like two or three times on a given blog. where the authors were active in the comments. And they noticed that, and people, bloggers in this case, in many cases directly reached out to me to thank me for the comments. And that laid the foundation. It was like super targeted, very much sniper shot. It was not me trying a hundred thousand different things. But you also in the beginning need to throw a lot against the wall. You don't know what you're good at. You don't know what works.

2:38:26 So you so you try a lot and Going back is fun taking the trip down memory lane. For Brainquick in way back in the day, the sports nutrition company. I mean I say sports nutrition because Turns out Americans did not want to be smarter at all. So selling something for improving cognition at that point didn't work at all. But

2:38:45 I got reports back. This is when very high touch from athletes, especially NCAA athletes who bought it for studying. They're like, Yeah, I don't really care about studying though, but it improved my time off the blocks for My track event. It helped me with this, help me with that. And being the idiot that I was, I ignored that for ages. I was like, no, this is brain quicking, right? In my own head. So I kept pating my head against a brick wall. It didn't work. And eventually I was like, well, wait a second. They're using this for sports.

2:39:10 The only reason I spent so much money on my supplementation as a percentage of my income is'cause I cared about sports performance, really. And then pivoted and that's when the whole thing took off. But that's not the takeaway that I was gonna share, what I was gonna share is at the very earliest stages. I had a website up.

2:39:27 Which a co worker at work at Trucan. had put together for next to nothing. Right. Because we were always scheming and we were always just like going out to lunch and bullshitting. We were friends. So I paid him but I couldn't pay him much and he was like it's fine. And he put together a website for me. I had not manufactured anything.

2:39:43 I had done quite a bit of basic math to figure out if the economics would work. Nothing fancy though. It's like How much do I think I could manufacture this for? What are some of the basic costs of sourcing? Day. Landed on a retail price. And at this point nothing has been made.

2:40:00 Nothing's been manufactured. There's no product to ship. And I just went to coworkers. Who are friends? And it wasn't exactly guilting, but these people At that point.

2:40:09 Didn't really need this necessarily. Like it could be of benefit, but I was like, Hey, I wanna try this out. Like would you be willing to just prepare for one of these so that I can try to do a first manufacturing run? And they're like Yeah, sure, why not? Fifth or something at the time. And that gave me just the bare minimum of capital to start having conversations. I love that. And then I had to negotiate everything, right? Because I would go to these contract manufacturers and they're like, well our minimum order size is this.

2:40:36 And in my head I'm like impossible. That's never gonna work. And then they're like, and our minimum term of commitment is this. I was like, Yeah, also impossible. So I had to sell the vision and at that time I was able to because I'd learned through cold calling off hours get a hold of the president of this Manufacturer. Got him on the phone at one point and I was just like, I know at some point

2:40:56 Somebody gave you a break. I'm not asking for anything other than can I drive to you at any time and just tell you about My vision for this business. And If We are able to find a way to work together, which I would like to.

2:41:08 I promise you that I will work with you exclusively as manufacturer. As we grow the business. Went down and I think he was maybe just amused more than anything else and he's like, Okay Sure. Like yeah, after all was said and done. And then I used them for years. Right. And that's how the deal got done.

2:41:24 But it all hinged on in the very beginning the pre sales. And also I was buying, I mean negotiating at that time, you want to talk about a real pain in the ass, magazine advertisements. feedback loop is really slow. after you have put out the cash for the advertising, you might not know what you're selling for. Months.

2:41:44 It could take a really, really long time. And so what I did when I started getting more ambitious, because I started with small ads, of course. Then once I got to kind of full page ads, I would go to Say distributors. And I would say I would love to feature you exclusively in this

2:42:02 Particular ad. But for that to work. I would just need you to Pre order X amount of inventory. So they buy X Mat of inventory. Let's say that's

2:42:12 Ten thousand dollars. And I would also say like it's ten thousand dollars, but the rate card for this full page is like forty grand. And they'd be like, Okay, well Seems reasonable, especially since we're gonna make a profit on the product. Then I would buy the ad space as a remnant.

2:42:26 So I would negotiate last minute. I would get that for like five grand. So what has happened? If I had them pre order, let's say ten K, I paid five, I'm already in the black. No matter what the outcome of the advertisement. And

2:42:38 This is the kind of stuff most entrepreneurs are gonna have to do on some level. Something like that. Two things I wanna highlight from your story. One, it's beautiful. You you seem to have a knack. For finding underserved. Opportunities and that's where the opportunity is. Like if it's a market, there's no opportunity because people know about it. Like you finding remnant. I think there's something with Appsuma we've had a lot of times where like when the news feed came out years ago on Facebook, no one was really advertising. We're like

2:43:03 Oh, this is huge. No one else is doing it. Let's go hard on that. And there's something interesting in in business and finding what others aren't noticing just yet. Specifically for me, I'm interested in the kind of the marketing part. I think the other thing that That was interesting about what you do. is you put a little bit more extra effort in. Just the sprinkle of the hot sauce. That's what you do. Right. So one thing and just to highlight for others out there to copy, copy it. Like Success Leaves Crumps.

2:43:25 When you wrote a blog Post comment on other blogs. You didn't just write Hey, cool story. Thanks. T Bow.

2:43:31 Right. You wrote like actual in depth things that made people want to reach out to you. Like many, many, many hours of a single comment. Right, like seventeen revisions kind of thing. And the same thing goes for when you wanted to do the manufacturing. You didn't just say like call the guy and be like I'll show up to your door. Tell me where you're at.

2:43:47 And I'll be there. That's a little bit more. It's not a lot. And it's not exclusive to emerge. That's available worldwide. Just put in a little bit more, take that little bit of chance and what a cool story. If it doesn't work out, at least you have this crazy story. You can talk about it. Little tweak.

2:44:04 The story I think that's appealing for a lot of people to hear, which is not what we're saying. Is I did a hundred X more. than the next guy. That's not what I did. I did like ten percent more.

2:44:16 With some degree of focus. The details matter and keep in mind I'm copying people too. Right, I had a three ring binder. Which I treated as my swipe file. Whenever I bought something And at that time. magazines were a big deal. That's changed, of course, but like print advertising and stuff was the game that I was interested in.

2:44:34 Anytime I was about to buy something or I bought something, or I flip through a magazine and my attention stopped for a period of time on an ad, I would take out the ad and I put it in A three room binder and I would study the ads I'd be like why? Why did this affect me? And then I'll copy it. And

2:44:49 To give an example just to a fine tune, right? How many emails have you received where someone's like blah blah blah blah blah. I'd love to pick your brand and meet for coffee. How about next Tuesday at two PM? Right. That's pretty presumptuous. Maybe that works. Right? But It's a little

2:45:06 Forceful. And in the same way that if someone's like, I'm a hugger and they invade your space and you back up Don't cause that. instinctive defensive response in somebody who reads your email. So even in the very beginning, and I still do this because believe it or not, I get rejected. It still happens, right? But in the case of say the manufacturer.

2:45:25 There was no presumption, I was thinking. Really appreciate you taking the time. This might not be of any interest. Like it was very light. I wasn't like I know what you need. This business is gonna be twenty X. We're gonna scale and you can be our exclusive provider. No, I was like, this may not be of interest, but I think there's a chance it is, because I've studied your website, I've looked at this, I've looked at your

2:45:45 Customers I've identified this, this, and this. And Would love to meet. Everything I just said. And if that doesn't work for you, I totally understand. Yeah.

2:45:53 Now what does that say? Because there's there's sort of a subtext to this. What that says is if this guy meets up with me. I'm not gonna browbeat the shit out of'em. I'm not gonna follow up twenty times after he said no.

2:46:04 So he's like the risk of me meeting with this guy is low because He had a light touch in the beginning. Now there's a time to be forceful, right? There are times to be more forceful. But I do find that that the carrot works better than than the stick, or a better way to put it, is just like a gentle touch works much more often than

2:46:24 A Heavy touch. This was also true with the bloggers. If a bunch of bloggers or people I thought might be bloggers were having drinks at like an after party at South by I would wander up and I would just say

2:46:35 Oh hey guys, I know you don't know me. Is it okay if I just join you guys by myself? And they'd be like, Uh okay, sure. And then I'd ask questions, I'd ask questions, eventually somebody'd be like What's your story? Like who are you again? And I would say, Oh, I'm here because the only thing I can really control with my first book, I'm really nervous about it, is looking at digital stuff because the publisher's doing everything else. Nightstop.

2:46:56 I wouldn't give them. A full pitch. If it ended up being the right audience, or if they had any interest, they'd be like Well what's your fucking book about, right? And then they're like, Well, it's about funny your ass. Well, yeah, and if it's a group of like six to eight people, chances are at least one person, even if they're just being polite, will be like, Well, it's a story, what's the book? And then I would just pay attention to to who was interested, right, who was opting in. Yeah. Right. And then at some point

2:47:19 Not in front of the group, by the way, but like I like buy drinks for folks. Like let me buy you guys a round of drinks, I feel like I'm crashing your party. And then if somebody really expressed interest, I would say you know Zero pressure. I know you I'm sure you got a lot going on, but If you're interested, I could send you an early copy of the book.

2:47:34 You're not gonna want to read the whole thing, it'll take too long, but I could just highlight ten pages that you might be able to use immediately because it has templates for this thing that you just mentioned. No, I Cool. And I'll be like, Yeah, I'm like I'm not expecting to promote it. I'm not expecting anything. I just want to expose people to this stuff. And you have to mean it, right? That you can't then follow up a hundred times and be a prick about it. Like you said and you didn't expect it. Yeah. Yeah. And That worked. It really worked. And that approach, that light approach has worked over and over and over again. I mean, it took me two or three years to get Jamie Fox on the podcast.

2:48:06 That was a long time. And then it was at the time, you know, podcast of the year. It took time. I think the two comments I'm curious one comment and a question as well. If you start with a light ask, you can do a big ask.

2:48:18 So let me give you an example. When I knock on doors from some of the YouTube videos where I just go to literally the nicest houses I see and just knock on their door. If I go out of your door and say, What do you do for a living? Like you're gonna close my door close in my face. Instead. Now what I do? Knocking door. I love your house.

2:48:33 Ha ha ha. They're like, Really? Yeah, I just You know, we're doing a documentary on the neighborhood and I just love your house. Can you tell me about it? Oh yeah, actually that That's so crazy. Yeah. I thought this I always drive by and I was always fascinated, but what did you do for a living to be able to get a house like it's so great.

2:48:50 It's definitely a different it's the same ask, just done a little differently. That does take practice and through time and persistence you you do get better at it. One thing coming back When's last time you're rejected? You were saying you got rejected from something I'm curious that last time, and what do you tell yourself? It depends on The type of rejection. And rejection comes in all sorts of forms, right? It could be silence. It could be

2:49:09 light like polite decline or it could be something stronger. This relates back to Am I pausing around a lot of next steps for myself or am I If you're rushing, it's probably because you have A

2:49:21 Scarcity perspective on something. And If you are as I always try to, and this comes back to the question you asked that I I didn't really answer directly, If you're looking to find something that is rarely seen or recognized, or to meet an unmet need.

2:49:38 You have some time. So I think those opportunities are everywhere. So my feeling is if I get rejected and I'm sure there are examples, I can't think of them offhand, but They're a lot of efficiency. The guest doesn't want to be on the podcast for the too busy or whatever. Fine.

2:49:50 twenty other people who will be As good if not. Better, possibly. If

2:49:55 There's an opportunity and the door closes because Who knows? There's an investment and blah blah blah blah blah for XYZ. Different reasons. I wanna make the deal happen but

2:50:07 They can't make it happen or I get rejected as a strong word, right? But for whatever reason I can't be part of that deal. My assumption is there are plenty of deals. Like there are plenty of fat pitches out there. And

2:50:19 That is based on experience. And I would say generally I tilt pretty pessimistic and that I have like a dim view of of human nature like very Hobbsian. Like I I'm not this bright eyed bushy tailed bunny that just hops around seeing gold everywhere and the best in people at all moments. That's not me, but obviously just based on my lived experience, there are opportunities fucking everywhere. There's so many million dollar and multi million dollar opportunities out there, like they're everywhere.

2:50:50 And uh for that reason. When I get turned down, that's within the entrepreneurial context. I'm just like, you know, that's fine. Maybe I got saved. for myself on this one. And that's happened.

2:51:01 Tons of times. Like I don't get into a deal and it's a disaster. Unmitigated disaster. I'm like wow. Okay. Glad life saved me from that. That sounds like you're optimistic. That's a little optimism. Here's what I would say. It's

2:51:13 In this particular case, it is a very specific form of informed optimism. I'm not default optimistic. I look for hedging against worst case scenarios and so on. I mean I think you you have some of that too, right? With cutting costs and looking at these things. But in this particular case, I've just seen so many examples. Uh

2:51:32 Successes where you would never predict a success. Starbucks gets turned down by everyone. They're like another coffee company. Too crowded, no way. There are so many examples. When I started my podcast, I was told it was too crowded.

2:51:46 In two thousand fourteen. Very smart people. I'm not gonna name, but they said You could do it. But I feel like that ship has already sailed. Two thousand fourteen. And

2:51:57 I think I also have learn to have A less extreme response to what we might consider rejection. Because number one, if you're gonna be a good resource allocator.

2:52:10 If you are easily offended or get easily spun out. You're gonna be exhausted. A lot of the time. And uh I also frame so much in the form of experiments.

2:52:22 They're not pass fail. This is feedback. And so I do so many things as two week experiments, one month experiments. Three month experiments. That applies to my podcast. That applies to everything in the business world that I do. That applies to my style of investing. Like, all right, I'm gonna experiment with blah, blah, blah. And then I get my face ripped off and I'm like, Hm, okay. Good feedback. Maybe I'm not so good at X, Y, and Z. Maybe I should stick to my bread and butter. Okay. Well, that was worth an experiment and I capped my downside. So I learned. Right.

2:52:52 Good feedback. And For all those reasons, I would say that I'm less reactive than I used to be, but the truth is, like you told the story of Jake, there are So many opportunities out there. And I'll just say from meeting Let's just call it. unmet needs or finding niche opportunities that other people don't see.

2:53:11 There are a couple of resources I'll mention and I return to these things all the time. These are things that I reread and I'm probably gonna reread all of these again. These are just Almost like mantras. I'm trying to train myself to recognize and think of these things. One would be Blue Ocean strategy. I mentioned it before.

2:53:29 Excellent book. Excellent, excellent book. How can you be a category of one? Another one I've mentioned a million times and I I mentioned a million times because I'll read it a million times. One thousand true fans by Kevin Kelly. And then within the twenty two immutable laws of marketing, there's one chapter called the Law of Category. And it gives old examples.

2:53:49 So don't get the for the internet'cause it was written in like ninety seven or something. Get the old version. And I think I may have to do it. even excerpted it for either Tools of Titans or Tribe Mentors. But it's called the law of category and they talk about, for instance, the invention of light beer. Or being the first light beer of X, right? And the first low cost airline. I mean, these are things that came out of nowhere. And how can you create a category of one where you're not trying to be the best?

2:54:15 you have decided and positioned yourself to be the only, whatever that is. And I think of there are so many examples and part of how I assess playing fields also is I'm like how hard is it right now? To create a category. Of one. And I look at, for instance, some of the early innings in podcasting, and you had people who broke all the rules and became mega successes. Hardcore history, for instance, with Dan Carlin, my favorite podcast still to this day.

2:54:41 His episodes I think they come out are they historically like once every six to nine months, maybe six to twelve, one episode. And they're four to five hours long. They're effectively audio books on history. No one would have predicted or prescribed. that as a successful format. Nobody.

2:54:58 Zero. And yet. It developed this enormous call audience and has allowed him to do a million things. Now that would be a lot harder.

2:55:06 Why? Because it's less human driven and more algorithm driven. So I'm like, huh, okay. Maybe it's time for me to choose an easier game. I don't like hard games. I mean sometimes I like to push it if I'm doing some board game or maybe trying to ski like right within the bounds of my capabilities, but in terms of big life games, I'm not looking to suffer. I'm not looking to crawl on my knees on broken glass for a hundred miles to make some really complicated business model work. I'm like, no, I want Until I find something that seems

2:55:35 Simple until I find something where I'm like Hmm. Maybe this doesn't need to be the hardest thing in the world. I keep looking. All of my best investments have been kind of obvious.

2:55:46 And low risk. All of my best investments. And when I've deviated from that. So the same criteria that I use for entrepreneurship for content. the same criteria I should use in investing.

2:56:00 At least early stage stuff. Yeah. All the same stuff. Are there other people who come to mind? Who either

2:56:06 worked off of the blog post or that you've interacted with personally who read early versions of the book outside of Jake where you're like, you know what, this is a good example of another person. Who's put it into practice? One thing I wanted uh to comment on. I got rejected yesterday. It was like a mutual friend of ours. He's like, Yeah, come on the show to then yesterday's like, No, don't come on the show. I don't like you. He didn't like that I made a comment about him. To his face. Yeah, yeah. Well I did to his face. And then he

2:56:31 But he's been promising for Two years. And so I think younger no, a twenty year old No would have guilt at him and be like, What the fuck, dude, you like said you would do this thing. But what you said is actually something I work in therapy a lot, which is instead of emotion and react Pause and respond.

2:56:45 And I tell myself that no pause. Which I love that you're saying I'm like We're going to the same therapy. Off off mic, we'll talk about it. Oh my God, horse. What a small world. But the pause and respond was like okay. And you're not gonna guilt anyone really into doing something that they're excited to do.

2:57:01 And I said hey Thank you for being honest with me. I appreciated that. And I'm sure that's not what he was expecting me to say to him. But I appreciated it. And I was like, Yeah, that that must have been hard for him to send. Said.

2:57:10 It sounds like there's a little miscommunication. We're probably gonna have an experience in the future. And we might work together in the future. Let's go for a walk. And he's like, Sounds great, let's do it after the holidays. And that's definitely a matured experience for me. And so the rejections keep happening.

2:57:23 Right, but how we we can choose to respond to them. And approach them can change. There are with most things there are always more opportunities. It's easier for me on the business side to see this. Right. So for instance, you know, I got out of a very long for me relationship, I mean, a five plus year relationship about a year ago. So in just say the dating world, which is has changed a lot in six years. And it's very bizarre on a whole lot of levels for the same reason that content creators and creation have become very

2:57:51 different. I mean a lot of the same factors are at play. Gamification, volume, paradox of choice, I mean all sorts of things. sort of gamification of FOMO. Right. I mean, there's a lot that goes into the similarities, but on the business side, just because I've spent so much time looking at that and I've had so much feedback from people who have read the first book and I've seen so many hundreds of businesses. I'm like guys, there are opportunities. Everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. You also have to believe you're you're commenting on dating. I was struggling with dating in Austin. And then I struggled in LA, and I struggled in in New York. I was trying all these places. You also have to understand that

2:58:25 You have to believe it exists. Yeah. Yeah. You really do have to believe it. I found that it was easier to believe it exists in Barcelona by You know, one, optimistically, and then working on it and be like, Holy shit is could there really be someone out there? It's like yes there is. That that is optimism. Then and it's something learned. One of my favorite books this year is Learned Optimism. Okay. This is uh Seligman.

2:58:43 It might be. I don't know exactly. But the idea is that you can actually learn it and practice it. Did you even right learn Optima? Oh. I do a lot of homework, I do a lot of research. Oh yeah, I love that book. And so I was believing that my friend said to me once, his name one of my best buddies JR was like there's gonna be a woman you'll meet.

2:58:58 Who's all of us combined in one? And I was like, that's bullshit. And it took me a few years in therapy and relationship coach and being alone. To be like Maybe there could be.

2:59:08 And being patient that that existed and then finding it. being and be like, Oh wow, it really does exist. And it does still take work, but it's like that it was out there. Yeah. Same with business and all these things, like believing you can have these things. So here's another example. Yeah, there's a guy Pat. Pat is someone uh you know, he is in customer support in Poland. In Poland. All right. Yeah, he does a customer support job. Probably makes like twenty five thousand a year, give or take. I I don't know, it's you know, maybe that high, especially in Poland.

2:59:32 And he's dreamed to be an entrepreneur. And he loves YouTube. Mm. Loves YouTube. Loves it. And so it's like I'm studying YouTube obsessively. Maybe I can help local people with their YouTube channels.

2:59:43 And so he and it's not necessarily the pre sale method, but close to it. He was just started contacting people that he knew within YouTube and said, Let me run your channel for you. And now I think he's close to about ten thousand dollars a month. In Poland, which is basically a billionaire. But the the idea there, just taking a step back, what are the elements people can learn from? Where are you spending your free time?

3:00:01 And he is obsessed with YouTube. He's just like I love the channels, I love the thumbnails, I love the title, I love the content. How do I make that my career, not being in a customer support role? And then if I understand it, maybe even go work for free. Sounds like you've have experiences around that were like, let me do a great comment. That's a free work, frankly. A great comment's free work that gets attention. So as he reached out to people and started helping people, now he's actually got retainers. on clients who is running their YouTube channels.

3:00:24 And so I don't know if he's quit his job doing that. I'm not sure exactly, but that was another example of him feeling good about starting, feeling good about asking asking people. And now he's got a ten thousand dollar month. Business helping people with your YouTube channels. I want to Triple underscore the free work piece.

3:00:40 Because there's a lot of righteous indignation online about this. Crops up a lot with Like spec work. On behalf of artists and things like that, where it's like I'll never work for free, like people are being exploited, blah, blah, blah. And there are cases where that's true. Everything I have done has been built on free work.

3:00:58 If I look at all of my biggest wins. I can't think of a single exception in the sense that First job out of college. Why did I get that? Because a guest speaker who was the CEO, young guy, came in, talked to our class. I wrote my entire term paper on that business because I wanted to do a free competitive analysis and show how valuable I could be to the business, right? I wrote my entire term paper on that. Free work. Right. If I look at

3:01:23 Four hour work week. How'd that come about? Guest lectures twice a year. Tons of prep. Took it super seriously, got feedback, everything to iterate, iterate, iterate. Never got paid a dollar, right? I spent my own money on travel the blah blah blah blah blah. All free.

3:01:38 If I look at My investments in the start up world. I In the beginning. would do anything I could to like co invest with someone to get A tiny amount of money.

3:01:50 into the company I mean a just a f a few thousand dollars. And then I would proceed to do like a hundred thousand dollars of work. In terms of being like the most valuable low cost person on their entire cap table. I wanted them to be like, wow. Okay, this guy owns nothing of the company and he's materially impacted the value of this company, including the value of my own shares as a founder.

3:02:11 And then what happens is I get Those people are like Tim's fucking awesome. Yeah. And they are willing to do what? They're willing to say that to other founders. And then it builds and it builds and it builds.

3:02:25 And People have gotten I mean, this is not gonna work right now, folks, so just be aware I'm in the process of streamlining everything, but as one example like Charlie Hone worked with me for years. He did that. by sending me basically the equivalent of like the term paper that I did for my first job, right? He would hear me or rather not hear me because the podcast didn't exist, but he would he read my blog posts.

3:02:49 And he got a pretty good idea of the things that would be helpful to me. And he just did them. He just went out and put in like tens of hours, maybe more, into these various projects and he'd be like, just wanted to send this to you. I thought it'd be helpful. And that's it. And eventually after two or three of those, I'm like, Okay, this is actually very helpful. This guy's very proactive.

3:03:07 Very detail oriented. Let's have a conversation. So There's just to say Sometimes the

3:03:14 Best bargain that you have. is doing something for free. Especially if they have time. Everyone has the time. I mean I can give a few other examples to to kind of just keep encouraging that. I Got my job at Mint because I spend a week for free putting together a marketing plan. There you go. Cause he said no to me and I said, Let me just at least present you a plan. So I spent more or less at least forty hours, if not more, working on a plan, brought it to him and said,

3:03:35 If you like this plan, I'll execute it. You can pay me this amount for three months. And if I do well and you like what the output is, then you can give me equity and a hundred thousand dollars. Which I got three months later. Yeah. That was because I spent a whole week for free working on it. I mean same thing with a lot of the best people I've hired within

3:03:49 The company today, Jay Yang. He's 17 years old. He still has to get a permission slip to work with us. He lives at home with his parents. Shout out, Jay. I love this guy. But he put together I think a thirty point Google slide presentation showing me everything that sucks with my social media and my email. Now he's making good money working living at his parents. Oh so this guy's gonna be a beast. He's phenomenal. Yeah. Right. Same thing with Jeremy, who's a producer of our channel. He worked on my Instagram thing for free two weeks.

3:04:14 Dylan, who's our new producer. A website that's like I wanna work with Noah Kagan dot com. I almost always ask that question, how much hours did you put in this free work? And they're like a lot. It's almost always a lot.

3:04:24 And that's a little risk, right? But at the same time, one, you have something cool you can show, two, you learn, and three, the opportunity. For the ask is pretty high, and the downside is you spend a little bit of time learning. So I think it's a great call out. Oh, it goes on and on too. Now that now that you're talking about it. Certainly the podcast have no business model for

3:04:41 Ages. I mean I I don't think I'd any sponsors until I'd have to go back and look, but episode thirty, forty, fifty, I can't remember. And Rewinding the clock, though, you mentioned something in passing that most folks are not gonna recognize and that was Opening of Kimano, OTK.

3:04:57 So this event that I put together. And uh When I did this event, I was curious. I always try to go And I'm not saying this is the right move. I just like the mathematics and

3:05:11 The lack of crowding in high end. I always like to go high end, if I can. it provides a margin of safety that I think is there are many reasons for it. But it provides a margin of safety that's very appealing from an economic perspective, right? The better your profit margins the more room you have for making mistakes. And then I work backwards. So in this case what I did was I was like, okay.

3:05:32 Can't remember exactly what I started, but I was like, Well, could I make whatever the number of five million bucks or whatever it was from one event. I can't remember. I'm making that number up. The math isn't gonna actually compute, but I worked backwards and I was like, Okay, if I'm gonna do that. I'd gone to some high end events that I'd paid for and I was like, Well Looks like I'm gonna have to charge a lot. So it's gonna have to be Let's just say minimum ten grand. And then

3:05:53 The sooner people purchase the less expensive it is. It's it's going to escalate. So it's gonna go from ten and then like the next week it's twelve point five and then the next week it's fifteen thousand. And It was effectively as one would expect with the name, sharing everything that I'd done with my first few books. At this point, I guess was my first two books.

3:06:14 And it was it seems very quaint at the time because of how constrained it was. Now it would be like a million and one different tools, or at least that would be expected, but Content marketing at the time, which was It's more like a biathlon instead of like a quadruple. Decathlon, which it is now. There's so many different options. And

3:06:32 I put together a blog post, which is the equivalent of like a sales page. Or an email. A million different forms this could take. And uh then there was an application process, which was legitimate. That wasn't bullshit. I wanted to make sure the composition was impeccable. I wanted the room to be На час Diverse from an experiential perspective.

3:06:51 I wanted a lot of people from different industries, different strengths, different weaknesses, different networks. I also wanted People who were Fucking cool and low maintenance. I just did not want assholes and One of the ways I vetted for that, I didn't want anyone going into debt to go to this event. I didn't want anyone jeopardizing their finances. I didn't want anyone taking out a second mortgage. I didn't want anyone bappa. I didn't want

3:07:12 To be responsible for anyone else's bad financial decisions if they were betting the farm on this. So I asked people to provide in their Google Form application. I was like, would you be willing to provide proof that you have, say, at least a hundred thousand dollars in savings. If you're gonna spend fifteen grand on an event. And one guy replied and he was like I don't think you need to be my financial nanny, but if you want to come onto the tarmac and look at my private jet too, you're welcome to do that. And I was like, Thank you for disqualifying yourself. You're like Don't need that guy at the event. Yeah No, thank you.

3:07:42 And uh this this is going somewhere. So I I pre sold the event. With A blog post and a Google form. That was uh might have been woo at the time. And then then I was able to decide, by the way, at that point, do I really want to do this? I can still back out. I haven't taken any money.

3:07:58 People have committed like they're in. So I thought about it and then I was like, all right, now how do I work backwards? From this cost. And insure. This was gonna be I think a three day event, if I rem remember correctly. Like how can I ensure that I have the peace of mind of knowing I've delivered that value in the first few hours of the first day?

3:08:16 I was like, Okay. How would I do that? Right? This is a question I didn't have an answer at the time. I'll do something I've never done. I'm gonna share my actual book proposals and marketing proposals and I'll redact a few things, but like otherwise like As soon as we get there. That's one of the first things I'll do. I'll be like, Here you go, keys to the castle. Boom. Like you just made your money back.

3:08:34 This is worth what you paid. The second thing I did This is not relevant to the Well, it's gonna get to the point'cause I was talking about buying. Sometimes you have to buy your first customers. Or your first like proof of concept. Like if you want marquee clients, sometimes you have to like take a loss on that in time or money. To make it happen.

3:08:51 I really firmly believe that for a lot of things. Just like Reddit wanted to prove it's Ad system worked. They want a case study. So what do they do? They give you free advertising. Brilliant. That's a good trade. So in a way they bought their first Case study. I'll share one more thing just because people who run events might find this helpful, or even just like small groups, masterminds.

3:09:08 There were bios for every person at the event and people had a bound book basically with everyone's short bios. And we took I want to say probably two hours, or roughly a hundred people. And Everybody in the room stood up. And

3:09:24 They got to Do a brag? A give? And then an ask. Cool, I like that. So they get up. 'Cause people especially at higher end events are like

3:09:33 Well, you know, I run a tech thing. Like oh I have an app. And it's like, Oh, that guy's like the founder of Instagram or whatever. Come on, like give us a little bit more color. And that's not a real example. None of the founders of Instagram were there, but sometimes you you end up in these scenarios where People for a lot of good reasons or not for bad reasons are being excessively humble. And then you really just don't have an idea of what the hell people are doing. And so I was like, get up and like give a real brag. Like detailed brag. Don't make it twenty minutes, right? This is give like One to two minutes like real brag.

3:10:05 Then a give something you're really good at or something you have access to. where you feel you're world class, like where can you help people? Give a give. There's one give and then ask like something you really need help with. Or want help with. Could be anything. And everyone who's listening for every person.

3:10:22 If they have a give you need, take a note. If they have an ask that you can help with. Write it down. And That alone, I think made the event.

3:10:31 hugely successful. To this day, I'd have to go back and check, but I mean literally this was who knows? I don't know. Two thousand. twelve or something. For at least five years, maybe still to this date, there was a Facebook group for those attendees.

3:10:45 That was active every week. And people still talk about it. No. Coming back to the original point. I'm talking so much in this, but it's more like a conversation than a podcast at this point. Uh not a podcast. Podcast. It's a podcast. I spent so much fucking money on that event. To overdeliver?

3:11:03 Right, like rent it at a castle, had like flamenco dancers, fucking classical musicians. And plus, by the way, if you do an event in Napa, you're dealing with basically the cartel. Not like Mafia cartel, but coincidentally, everybody's gonna charge eight dollars for a cup of coffee. You're not gonna be able to negotiate anything is my point. So this event ended up being so incredibly expensive, basically made nothing. But Was a huge home run for people. I felt really good about it. I learned a ton. was an incredible investment of time.

3:11:31 Right. So one could argue that was that was a waste of time. But I developed relationships with a hundred people who I handpicked. I had speakers at the event and a lot of questions that informed the whole thing. And

3:11:43 If I ever want to do another event. I would guess I would have at least ninety percent of those people who would immediately book. A second, like O T K two. Yeah. No problem.

3:11:52 So if I ever fell in hard times quit the podcast business, I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna do like One event a year. I know that that will work because I can pull different levers. I've talked to people who went to that event and they're like that was the best event ever went to.

3:12:06 And I was a little jealous I didn't go. I don't know if I saw the blog post, but a a few comments it's like It's it really interesting. You're like you didn't build a website. You sent out a an email, which you everyone can do that right now if you want to start a business. I have a forum. I like that idea of like how do you survey people. And then you could filter who do you want to sell to.

3:12:23 And see if they're raising their hand to be customers and then you could sell them something. I I love that. Something you said literally years ago. It was in Denver, remember the What was the conference we were both at? Somewhere in Denver Three O Three Conference. It was the bar. It was the Those two brothers, born team brothers. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I never forgot about this because You said I either do the most expensive or free.

3:12:44 Yep. And I love that because I'm always about the best price. I'm the low end. That's my thing. I'm like, give me the best deal. And so Absumo is about great deals. And then you as well. Like You wanna do podcast marsh, it's gonna be fifty, sixty, whatever, forty c it's gonna be the most expensive and you're gonna get a very high quality delivery. And and then how do you work backwards for that? You don't have to figure it out in advance, right? I decided like okay. Part of the marketing positioning. Is how premium this podcast is.

3:13:11 It is incredibly Expensive. I mean, we're gonna get into the weeds here, but talking about like the ten percent. What's the extra ten percent? That you can do. Like in the case of me pitching the manufacturer or whatever. So one thing that I've done with a lot of my sponsors, not everybody,'cause not everybody needs this, but

3:13:27 What are the levers in a podcast? Well, let's just say the basic economic model for most podcasts, not all, is sponsorship. People are buying ads. Why are they buying ads? Because they want to sell. Products. What are some of the Metrics that matter to someone trying to sell products. Let's assume for simplicity's sake that we're talking about direct response. Let's say we're talking about app sumo. You're gonna be tracking the numbers that you just mentioned. Traffic.

3:13:49 Conversion. Average order size. Now let's say App Sumo came. to Tim Ferriss show. And

3:13:55 decided we want a sponsor. Hypothetically. Let's say. Number one, I have to try the product. So I I test every single product within reason. There's some like enterprise stuff in which case I'll do a bunch of polling and d determine how my audience feels. Like one to ten, no seven allowed, how strongly would you recommend this?

3:14:12 to a friend do it off hours so the people who work at the company don't see it and can't spam it. Anyway, there are ways to do it if you don't test, but I generally test stuff. Let's say I test absolute great fucking product. What is the additional ten percent? The additional ten percent is I will look at the website and I'll say How well does this convert? Because

3:14:30 What is a nightmare scenario for me? Because I'm I one could say efficient, one could say lazy. Because they're similar. If someone has a great product and I put the time into a great read and I put it in front of my audience, And then their website doesn't convert.

3:14:45 And they blame it on me? That's way too much brain damage, way too much wasted effort. Now I have churn, right? They're like, Well, your podcast didn't work and they leave And then I have to find another podcast sponsor. So I might send my team.

3:14:58 To that sponsor. Record a loom. And say, Would love to have you as a sponsor, but we'd like you to make these following changes to the website, at least to a unique landing page. To improve conversion. We'd like you to improve in the following seven ways, in the same way that that seventeen year old sent you a video which was like

3:15:16 Here's how these things suck. I wouldn't word it that way, but I'd say We want you to convert as strongly as possible. We know our audience really well. This is how they're gonna read your website. Here's what the flow looks like. These are two places where they're probably gonna abandon the cart.

3:15:30 Fix, fix, fix. Doesn't take that long'cause we've done it a million times. And then guess what? Then I have a sponsor lasts like A year, two years, three years. And they spend millions of dollars instead of spending a lot on the upfront and then churning. It sounds like a lot, but it's actually not that much effort if you have the right team.

3:15:47 So let's hop back into the weeds of entrepreneurship. That sounds bad. Onto the front lines. Validation. What are some other means of validating your idea. To try to ensure that you're not deluding yourself anymore. That is helpful. I've done it the other way where I've spent six months I build a site betterk.com.

3:16:05 Spent six months, hundred thousand dollars on engineers. Oof. And then I spent ten thousand dollars flying to Vegas talking to a lawyer as a sports betting site. First off, I didn't I don't gamble. Not a great business for me to even start. Launched it, no one came. I could have easily found that on a weekend.

3:16:19 Instead of spending six and then this is the thing I'm like trying to tell people, I've done it the other way. Maybe you need to go through the other way to find that truth for yourself, but there's there's another door. So two other ways that you can validate business ideas that I really like number I would say the one that you really made famous. Adds mining page. Yep. The only thing that one, I don't like spending money. If I don't have to. Ads cost money and then you have to figure out the ad and landing page, but it is a way like kettle and fire, you know, uh Justin's company. Sure.

3:16:41 That's how it got started. Uh He did bone broth ads, he found that that was super cheap term, had a landing page people could buy and he's like This is working and now it's a hundred million dollar business. Yeah. So he followed your method. Yeah. The other method I would say is

3:16:51 marketplaces. So where are people already spending money that they're raising their hand? So Etsy, Craigslist, Facebook, Amazon. And how can you put even a fake or real product ideally and see if anyone's gonna buy it. So Let's say you you want to do like a Digital equipment like Microphones, cameras.

3:17:09 Whatever. Lighting. Business? That's a rental. You can go put that online right now on Craig's in your local area or whatever site is local and see does anyone actually message you about it? And if they do Cool. Go get the product or figure out now you have a business. Or if they don't

3:17:22 Okay, try something else out. So those are the other two ways outside of I would say the pre selling validation method to seeing if you have actual customers who want what you're doing. And the constraint of spending as little as possible. Well generally uh this is very broad strokes, but in my experience and certainly in the experience of a lot of people who are building businesses, not mimicking the one percent of the one percent of the one percent, right? Like the I can't get fit until I'm Tom Brady, which is generally not a great approach. But the people who are building real businesses, businesses that produce a lot of cash.

3:17:52 very often test incredibly inexpensively. If you look at the origins of CrossFit. That's the case. I remember the very early, super early days of CrossFit. This was not a Let's put thirty million dollars in and see what happens. It was prototype iterate prototype iterate small group.

3:18:11 Second location. Considering business models, et cetera. I mean this is true. in so many, so many, so many different places. Any other means of validation that you want to mention, or an example of someone who used Any one of those that comes to mind me already mentioned Kettle and Fire, but Yeah, I mean another one you could think of that's kinda silly is Facebook. I mean Zuck.

3:18:30 Copied, he didn't even invent it. This website. And that wasn't his first business. He actually created A face thing that got banned by Harvard, so I had to start again. And he created Wirehog. No one knows these ones, but I don't know anything about that. Yeah, Wirehog was a Napster competitor. Okay. That didn't really do much. But again, one thing in the the beginning of the book is how do you get going? And he at least got going. And his third idea, which was Facebook or the Facebook.com.

3:18:51 Believe he built it in a weekend, if not three days. It might give or take. And just by him he sent an email. Built it really quick, sent the email, and then it went viral instantly. Wasn't even his idea, he copied the Winkle Vosses. Yeah. And there's just a lot of these ideas you're like you start realizing it most of the biggest businesses Didn't start big. Like, okay, Google.

3:19:07 Two dudes at Stanford for a research project. Huh, that's interesting. Zuck in a college dorm. Bill Gates in Albuquerque, shout out Albuquerque, you know, working for someone else, creating software. And it was by doing these things where you had validation very quickly and had success that people wanted it. led them then to continue it for you know extended periods of time. And it and that's possible. I think Here's what happens though, Tim.

3:19:27 Tim. If I may. People this is the fucking problem, man. Everyone's like, My business is different. It's the unique one. I'm like You're the unique one? Really? It's you. Okay. Do it. Just go try it your way. And then let's try maybe an alternative way after six months with no results.

3:19:42 So corollary. Do the easy thing first. If you wanna okay, you really wanna you really wanna do the hard way. Okay, fine. Like What you really want to do is like build the flashy website and like do the thing and hire a bunch of influencers and have girls in bikinis prancing around with your energy drink. Whatever. Okay, fine. Maybe you could start though with a blog post. Maybe you could start with an email. Maybe you could start with something that's very cheap, very fast. Fast, fast, fast constraints. Are you hiding behind something big? Are you talking about?

3:20:14 The sexy photo shoot and the Super Bowl ad that you're never fucking going to do. Not because you couldn't do it, but but because you're hiding behind the big thing and you're not trying the small thing. Like what is the easy thing that you can do first? Do that. And this comes up all the time. in my business when I'm talking with employees, for instance.

3:20:33 Who have already embraced this by this point of it. I'm like We can do the hard thing. We can do the expensive thing. I'm not averse to it. But what is Something fast or something cheap that we can do.

3:20:45 First because if it works. Then that is a game changer and then We have these backup plans. I'll give you another example. How can you keep your life incredibly simple? Well, in the case of podcasting in the beginning

3:20:59 I realized if I end up with tons of accounts payable, accounts receivable, invoices, net payment terms, et cetera. That will insert a lot of complexity. into my life. So from the very beginning I did something that A lot of folks said would never work. Which was

3:21:18 You prepay for all your ads. There's no You book and then you run it and then you pay us thirty days later and then that drags out because it's the holidays or maybe you don't reply to email and then we're chasing you. There's none of that. You pay up front. That's it. And

3:21:36 That is an example of let's try the easy thing first or the simple thing, the beneficial thing. If people say no. We can always go to That third day,'cause everyone does that. But let's try the unorthodox thing first, in the sake of simplicity. And

3:21:51 Every once in a while it works. Right. And that ended up being a key determinant, I think, of my ability to build and scale and most importantly sustain this. For ten years. M my dad uh would always joke, it's better to be chased for the money than you chase them. Oh better to be on that end of things. I would that's then definitely how the Appsuma model has worked out. The idea with Appsuma just maybe a few more examples to get people like, Oh shit, I can really get going. You know, we say now, not how. And that that's definitely from the book.

3:22:20 And so examples of this is the teams like we definitely need the engineers to build this first. Definitely. I'm like Really? Alright, let me give you two examples. So One of them was we wanna as part of our VAP memberships, we wanted to give out credits. So Kinda like your event. How do we make spending a hundred dollars for a membership a no brainer?

3:22:36 Well, we give you a hundred dollars. So they're like, Well, we need to build it. Right. We did the model, fine, but let's go though build it. I'm like No no no What's the fastest way you can find out today?

3:22:45 Let's email people who are not customers or people who canceled. Give'em free credit. Tell them to Buy your membership and if they buy their membership they get free credit. They did it with a seventeen percent conversion rate. Now we're building that kind of stuff into the business.

3:22:56 Great. You did. And if it didn't work, you can ask those people why not. Or you can try something else. Instead of us spending A week, two weeks, four weeks, a month, two months now. Product management and designing it, all these other things. There's another example recently where

3:23:09 We wanna offer a new feature for this VIP membership. Same thing. Like, well we need the engineers to build SSO single sign on so that you can make it easy to log in. Again, have you asked a customer? Just go ask the customers to pay us for it. If they want this feature, see if they'll prepay for it. And if they do, great, we'll build it. If not, we're not gonna build it.

3:23:25 And that is something that you can keep doing whether you're an eighty million or a hundred million or a one dollar business. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, a lot of the time just now in terms of now not how, right? We think oftentimes and there's a place for this, but you know, ready. Aim fire. Sometimes it's ready fire aim. Just fire. Okay. Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire. All right. So we're gonna take a hard left turn here.

3:23:48 Because you you mentioned before we started You mentioned Hanukka gifts. And a question I often ask is Best purchases for Under fifty dollars, under a hundred dollars.

3:23:58 What has made some impact. Because the goal is to give people listening. Some things that might be helpful or interesting that aren't gonna break the bank, right? What you got? All right. So

3:24:09 Hanukkah or you know the Jewish Santa A.ka Noah Kagan's here. Brought you Hanukkah, holiday, yalda. All the gifts. depending on whatever people want. And so these are my favorite things. I think almost every single thing here is under forty bucks. Great that I've brought for you. And I don't and by the way, you could totally give it back. You know people gift to you and you're like, Fuck, I really don't want this. Feel free to be like yay or nay on it too. Okay. Didn't expect a bag of goodies, okay. This is my

3:24:33 I wasn't able to get the Amazon basics one'cause it's sold out. But this is a I think fourteen, fifteen dollar. Tiny travel backpack. And so I always leave one in my main suitcase.

3:24:43 And every time you travel, you're like, Oh shit, I wanna do a day trip, but I don't want to carry my computer backpack when I don't have anything else. So I always leave a similar one to this in my bag. Literally I was going to be buying one of these in the next few weeks. So thank you. That's a yay. This is a yay. This is a hundred percent a yay.

3:25:01 'Cause as you said, you think you already have a backpack, but that thing's full of your laptop and all your shit and it's heavy and it's And you s you sometimes just want a day pack. That's what this is. So this is EA. Thank you. Awesome. You like board games, this has been the go to board game. Shot and Totten.

3:25:16 Shot and 1199? It must be Oh look at this. Okay. So I've never I've never played it. It's a more basic car, it's kinda like poker, but with carts. So you get all these different players and then you just happens to kilt. Exclamation boy. That's a tagline. I like it. 'cause then you had the yeah the Taco Cat game. I bought that'cause you're a five bullet Friday. Love that. Yeah. It's a fun game. Similar game, basically you lay out cards, it's a two player game. And then you just play against for different

3:25:40 each of the cards there's about ten. You play three cards I play thirds and whoever's a better three set. gets that card and whoever gets the most cards wins the game. That was a little fast. Super Austin Game Shout out Eric Southwell's the one who brought that board game to me. Yeah, thank you. And also I want to highlight something here because I recognize something. So shotten Totten I was like, this must be German. So of course it is. And uh the Germans are very good at at designing board games. And more precisely, Reiner Knitzia, I believe that's how you'd say his name, who designed this. Yeah. Is one of the most prolific game designers in history. He's designed hundreds of games and he's won All of the awards.

3:26:14 And he has this incredible set of processes and sort of creative methods by which he's One of the most successful game designers of all time. So that's also cool to see his I didn't know that. Yeah. Sean Taunt, one of my favorites. Thank you. You have Element. You've tried Element, right? Oh yeah.

3:26:32 Sponsor of the podcast, too. I was gonna bring you already have a bunch of it, don't you? Uh well, which you got. Yeah, just like that. I got I brought you the citrus salt. Oh, I got a ton. Yeah, thank you. That is one of my favorite flavors, but yes. Ellen, I took I take it every day. They sponsor me too. Do you invest in them? No, no, no, I didn't I didn't. Alright, I couldn't get it in time. So I just printed it out. Dude, this is shout out Tynin.com, one of my best friends in the world. What is it? This is he he was the one that taught me about this. It's basically travel clippers. I'm a huge nail clipper. And I I'm very particular about my nail clipping. Like all these fucking Walgreen CVS, they're just shit.

3:27:05 And I finally I got this'cause on his recommendation and it's a game changer. There I wasn't gonna give you mine, but that's kinda that's too weird. Yeah, be a little grati. A little weird. So this is going to your address. Okay, my thirty nine ninety nine. It's literally this big. Okay, so it's big. So it's like the size of your pinky finger. Size of your pinky finger. Very it's very low profile. Super low profile. And for people who want to find this, how would they this is a zwilling? Zwilling. Oh, like for the kitchen life company. Exactly. And this is fire. Super tiny, but it opens up and the sharpness of it, which I'm very particular about. You can ask my girlfriend. She's like, You always cut your nails. I'm like, Yeah, I hate long nails. I love this guy. So big shout out for this'cause I've always been looking for like the perfect one. Wow. Thirty nine ninety nine. All right, we'll put this in the show notes for everybody, along with the other Hanukkah gifts. Hanukkah holiday uh

3:27:51 I think you may have read it, but I brought you my favorite. Kind of memoir book of all time, million miles in a thousand years. I Um Actually going to admit.

3:28:00 I have never even heard of this book. So tell me more. This guy a quote from Anne Lamont, who owns the author of one of my favorite books also. On creative process. Oh, by the way, you're Julia Cameron Artist Way.

3:28:14 Oh. That book is so Yeah, it's a good one. It's a good one. Yeah. So Ann Lamotte has an amazing quote on the cover of this. So Donald Miller. Donald Miller and this is How I Learn to Live a Better Story is the subtitle. That's cool already. A million miles in a thousand years. This is the book I gift the most. Okay. And

3:28:34 It inspired me to bike across America. But the the bigger concept for everyone out there is that We all wanna live a life without regret. We all wanna live not even with regret. I don't even worry about that. We all wanna live an interesting life. And so how do you do it? Mm.

3:28:45 And so Donald doesn't and he's a Christian author. Talks about Je I'm Jewish, like and I love it still. It's still my most favorite book and he's definitely I I love him and What he teaches you though is it's not necessarily like here's necessarily the tactic. But how do you approach life to be more interesting? So how are you around more interesting people? How do you do more interesting things? Like he didn't like his life. Mm-hmm. And he's like

3:29:05 I'm just gonna buy Cross America. And so he joined a group and then biked across the America and he by doing interesting things, he led an interesting life. And I I think it's similar to the four hour work week. A million dollar weekend where you read it and you're like I'm gonna go do something. And I think this really is that about how to have a fulfilling and interesting life.

3:29:19 Amazing. I'll give a little Teaser then also. So Here is the top of the back of the book. After writing a successful memoir, Donald Miller's life stalled. During what should have been the height of his success, he found himself unwilling to get out of bed, avoiding responsibility, even questioning the meaning of life. But when two movie producers proposed turning his memoir into a movie, he found himself launched into a new story filled with risk, possibility, beauty, and meaning. And then I'll I'll just give the first portion of the first sentence that then leads after that, which is A million miles and a thousand years chronicles Miller's rare opportunity to edit his life into a great story.

3:29:52 Goes from sleeping all day to riding his bike across America. Amazing. All right. Yeah, man. And we all can live an interesting life. It's not hidden existence. So far so good, man. Oh yeah, man. And then I brought you back an old school one. This is an old school one our team was was looking up things This is what you put on your blog uh in two thousand I think eleven. Oh my god. One of your favorite toys. I know what this is. This is hilarious. Okay. This is like a monkey slingshot and it screams when you shoot it across the room. Wow. I haven't seen one of these in a long time. This is a early recommendation that you put on your site. This must have been from the Pliocene era on my blog way back in the day. Yeah, we do a little research. I know you like that. I got one for my house. It is fucking annoying. Oh I guess it'll drive you nuts. My girlfriend's drive you completely insane. But it's uh it's a fun toy. I got it for other people for the holidays. I think it's like n I'm like giving it to them and getting the hell out of their house because the screaming's loud. Flying monkey. Yeah, no, it is it is not it is not low volume. Thank you. Yeah, man.

3:30:52 Happy holidays. Yeah, appreciate it. And I can put all of that into the backpack that you gave me. Also. Exactly. This is the last one. I love my pilot G two point three. I need it's sponsored by these guys.

3:31:02 I know you you have pens and I've seen you have pens all around, but this is just like Everywhere I travel, I always have with me here. I bring them to Spain, have it all around the house, boxes of them. Yeah. This is one of my favorite pens. And I needed one. And I use blue. I almost always use blue black because I Copy edit a lot.

3:31:18 And if you're printing stuff out, it's in black, blue just makes it easier. So Nailed it Thank you. Oh yeah, man. I G two point three eight. All right.

3:31:28 Where to go from here? I mean, what have we missed? We've talked we've gone from the philosophical to hire my mom dot com to nail clippers to bicycling across the United States. Anything else that you'd Like to mention l actually let me ask you a question. that relates to the things I'm considering, just to ask you for help. So YouTube. How do you think about YouTube? And do you think I should do

3:31:56 more video because I have conflicting feelings about it, as you know. And then there's always that voice. Not always, but there's that voice maybe ten percent of the time, which is just like, Are you just being weak? Are you just afraid to compete? Right. Which comes up with various things. Like maybe you're intimidated by the production quality, the ability that you see here, so you're just not willing to play the game'cause you don't like losing. That's less of the time. That's like ten, twenty percent of the time. Far on YouTube.

3:32:19 And specifically thoughts on If you think I could do YouTube in a way that would be fun and energizing. In and of itself. So In other words, something that I would find intrinsically rewarding.

3:32:33 Even if it doesn't pop, right? Yeah. I'm curious the voice in your head. Oh that's that's with this YouTube. Yeah, with the ten or twenty percent. Well It's not all the time. I was just talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday. I

3:32:46 Like competing. I've always been a good competitor, right? It drives me and I enjoy the stakes of competition in sports. I enjoy the stakes of competition in a million different ways. Like it drives me to be better. And it genuinely is something that I derive pleasure from. Like I get a lot out of competition. So there are things that for instance, you know, at some point I would love to compete in archery.

3:33:09 And Think there are some interesting opportunities there. I'm a happier person when I compete in some capacities. So being very competitive.

3:33:19 Seeing the market get really saturated with podcasts and seeing some very good people come in and how it's skewed pretty heavily into entertainment. So it is gone from I think what I find plays to my strengths, which is mostly kinda education, practical tactical, et cetera. Skewed pretty heavily towards

3:33:40 Entertain or bust. You can have some of the how to and prescription, but you must be entertaining. Two Cut through the noise. And

3:33:48 I can be funny occasionally, but it's not my Ha! It's not something I do professionally. There are people who are far better. Yeah, press. Right. Pros. Yeah, like Rogan. I mean he's pro, right? Like this is this is a superpower that he's honed. And there are many others, a lot of entertainers, comedians, actors, actresses who are really good behind the mic.

3:34:07 And in front of the camera. So I think there is certainly part of me Because I like to compete. generally hate losing. And you have to be careful how you define losing'cause you could find yourself

3:34:19 caught in sort of a Venus fly trap of FOMO and all sorts of issues. Which I don't contend with that much, to be honest. That voice is one Of

3:34:29 Are you sure that you are opting out of this? For good reasons or is it because you just don't want to compete? Great coaches don't. Don't give answers, by the way. They just ask questions. So you reminded me you're not getting out of here. We'll talk a little coaches. We'll do the forty eight hour challenge. Maybe we can put front load a little bit of that. But I there's the question around this YouTube thing. What would make the choice obvious?

3:34:49 I'm being honest, I think the choice is obvious, which is I don't do it. I mean I think that like I mean I think I think it's pretty straightforward. Partially because I see no way to make YouTube pop without compromising my privacy. more than I already have from a facial recognition perspective. And that is already a challenging aspect of my life from uh privacy security perspective, like a lot of weird stuff happens.

3:35:14 If anybody's curious, just read a blog post I wrote. Which is titled I think it's Eleven Reasons. Not to become famous. And that'll outline a lot of the issues by the way that people who are just starting out, maybe a year prior to that coming out. have by and large, I'm in a number of private WhatsApps with various

3:35:31 folks and a lot of very, very successful creators and they're like Oh yeah. Check, check, check. Like right down the list. I've had to deal with all of those things. So it's it's not unique to me. And they're much bigger celebrities, of course. I'm not Taylor Swift or something. But I actually really like my privacy. So I think that if I had to make a snap judgment decision right now, it's like, yeah, I'm not going to Use that as a primary

3:35:55 Tool. It's appealing though because I recognize how effective it can be. If you do a great job, but there's also part of me that looks at it and I'm like, Well Much like choosing a business. Much like

3:36:06 Choosing Anything. A sport to play. If you don't have an advantage. And that advantage often is that you really enjoy doing it on some level.

3:36:15 You're not going to have At the very least the staying power. to persist over time. You're not gonna have the endurance. So it's like if If you love golf, maybe you should consider doing something with golf. Instead of being like, Well, I think

3:36:29 Midwestern moms, even though I'm from New York City and I'm a male, I think Midwestern moms really need this when their kid is four years old. Like maybe that shouldn't be your business because if there's a Midwestern mom who has a four year old Who's got Nothing but passion in her veins for that. She's gonna beat you. Like she's gonna own you.

3:36:47 Especially over time. So That's another way that I think about it. But I also assume that there may be things hiding in plain sight that I'm missing.

3:36:55 I got suggestions for you that I think will be Low effort, high results. But before we get into that. What what's your goal? What's my goal yeah what would you say your goal is around? No, I be I mean I think the goals around it would be to Experiment with one of the few

3:37:11 means that I see. of expanding the podcast. Like I do a lot with this podcast in terms of Pulling interesting levers in the world, right? Like as a means of attempting to the best of my ability to really impact individual lives, but also on a macro level to

3:37:29 really changed conversations around. Say psychedelics and psychedelic assistant therapies. Also discussing risks, but there are many different Things I would like to introduce people to and the larger my audience is. I should say qualified audience, right? I'm not convinced that YouTube necessarily will contribute to the profile of My

3:37:51 S T B D. I think it probably could. If I could expand

3:37:58 the reach of the podcast. And if I'm talking to most podcasters who have been around for a while. Given a lot of the platform changes. And given the black box nature of a lot of the analytics. Once you hit a critical mass, it becomes very challenging to grow your podcast. There is nobody after two drinks there, being honest with me, who says anything otherwise. And

3:38:20 There is a grace period in the beginning when you have that kind of meteoric up and to the right. But it's like This is gonna be an exaggeration, but it's like once you become like when you're becoming Google, sure, you can have that like double, triple, 10 X every year growth. But when you get to a certain point, it becomes more challenging on a percentage basis to influence the size of the Yeah, the mothership. The goal and I'm not convinced that YouTube is the only way, but is to extend the reach of the podcast. At this point.

3:38:45 There are other metrics I could pull in, but let's use that for simplicity's sake. I think that's a great question is how do you stay hungry when you're full? Or do you need to stay hungry. I think that's another way. That's a great point. It's like what happens when you finally Have the money.

3:38:58 When you have the audience and so How do we rethink what that vision and that purpose is? Right, I noticed that was a shift for myself where like oh if I finally get money for it. So I got it. It's like, dude, you got it. There's no you don't need to be angry about Mark and Facebook anymore. No, no, for myself, right? It was it was therapy and a lot of work to be able to get to the point where it's like, how do I want to spend that day? And it's like my day can talk about money and startups and business with people like yourself and learn how you think about things. Run app Zoom or promote tools like

3:39:24 Wow. I can do this every day for Until I never die. Yeah. And so I I think being clear on the goal of where it goes. Like for me with with my content, I just want to keep doing it for ten years. Yeah. So I'm going to ten years.

3:39:36 tenure plan. And so that that's a balance of I I like doing just business stuff. I don't do Bouncy balls, I don't blow up Ferraris, I'm not in prison, there's no Squid Games unless it's a business related one. Yeah. And it's like how do I do that with what I want and what the audience is gonna be benefited by for a long period of time. And that that's I'd say for specifically with content, my my interest. Okay. So what might be

3:39:57 Yeah. high reward experiments. A few things. Number one. Who says you have to be on the camera now when you're doing this? Yeah. Yeah. I just don't know what the alternative looks like. Well, it's just you're asking the question, but then your guest is the one getting featured. So there's actually a reduction of the amount of exposure as well as on your YouTube thumbnails, it doesn't even show you. It just shows the guest. Yeah. Yeah. And so there could be there could be wide shots, but it really could be a show where it's more featuring the person you're talking to. Yeah, totally.

3:40:21 So that is that is one massive thing that in your channel, right? You can actually have great content, but it's not maybe you on camera. Second thing, how much Like I can tell, but how much are you putting into like Producing your YouTube videos. Uh I honestly don't even know. At this point, I want to be

3:40:36 the tools we use shape us, right? So I Depends on what we mean by production. I'm okay with high production value. What I have seen on YouTube In the last year. Year and a half, two years especially. is a lot of fishing for clippable moments with like the most salacious clickbaity.

3:40:56 Stuff. used as headlines and text overlays. And I do not want to shape myself into looking at my tent through the lens of like when can I clip something into the Jerry Springer fight scene. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a baby mama. You know, like I don't wanna suddenly

3:41:13 Go fishing for that'cause that will start to affect the macro level. Right. Like I know people who plan their podcasts now around like the clips. The clips. And so the drive becomes the clips. Now I'm also

3:41:27 I think longer form YouTube. This is something where I'm unqualified to say, but I have had clips on different platforms that have had like a hundred million views. I mean I've had a couple go nuts. Yeah. Which is a credit to my team. However, with those clips which have clear attribution to this podcast, I have seen effectively

3:41:45 Zero percent. conversion to increase downloads. So the value capture from the platforms It's a very subtle thing, but the amount of value that platforms are capturing They capture is all the value. They get all the value. All the other side. That's a horror discussion.

3:42:02 Creator Value Capture. Is Something I I have paid attention to and continue to pay attention to, but Why do you ask about the uh like how much I'm putting into it? I'm coming back on like small effort, high results, so What you keep saying or the underlying subtext is that you want to grow the podcast.

3:42:18 Yeah. It seems like growing the podcast is it and it It's not clear that YouTube actually makes a difference. So the I would wonder, what have you done in the past that grew the podcast? I mean I would also say if I had to pick and choose at this point, frankly Just in terms of like okay. Winter's coming, not to be all dramatic about it, but

3:42:35 If I'm looking at and keeping in mind too, it's it's not like I have any insider information, but I do know a lot of people in tech who work on a lot of things. And If I'm thinking about defensibility, long term viability Reaching my one thousand true fans. And hopefully one thousand or one million true fans, two million true fans. You know, I mean we're already in the millions with with the newsletter and so on, but I would choose the newsletter over the podcast.

3:43:01 At this point. How can you coming back to I think how we like to approach this, how can you experiment? So let me give you specifics, how can you experiment with YouTube to drive a newsletter? So one yeah I don't know you're No, I think that's where I would look at it.'Cause you're thinking YouTube to podcast, but maybe YouTube to newsletter. So specifically your thumbnails. Not really that tight. Your title's not really that tight.

3:43:19 Because you probably don't have Pros. Like we have a professional person that just does title and thumbnails. And we have a thumbnail specific just designer. For the team. And uh it is interesting. Do you want to compete in it? Maybe not.

3:43:30 But I think you're already doing it. You have cameras here. Yeah, I do. I mean, so passing that to a team that Chops it up. So for me, I show up to the video, they have the pre production done.

3:43:40 I've already chosen the topics, we've agreed on that. Pre production's done, I show up, do my part, and then it just That happens. But They're testing thumbnails. They're testing titles.

3:43:48 There's a shorts team that does all the short work. And what I my recommendation is is that I think you can invest a little more in that and then just put that into your newsletter. All of YouTube is is a legion. I think I know it sounds creepy, but like as a generation of audience that you can then have as a frequent audience in your newsletter. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder. I mean it's worth testing. I know we've tested

3:44:06 Different subscription options. I don't want to take us too too far after. So again, I think you're you could do have shorts team, probably actually a dedicated agency. I wouldn't even bring it in house. I can recommend someone. I would also consider just having someone that does your titles and thumbnails on a consistent basis. So that as you're doing great content, does someone want to watch this six hour interview? Yeah, a lot do. But give'em some shorts because they see great shorts, they're like, Oh shit, where's more of that?

3:44:29 And then go to the video. They say the video then in the videos it's like let me go to the newsletter. And everything is around the newsletter. Now on the podcast I always again in business everything's about what's the goal and what's the thing that actually makes impact on the goal. So on podcast I do think you

3:44:42 Potentially going on other shows. Could be Yeah. It always. Yeah. If you want to do it. I think that's an important part that you said. I don't want it I wanna do it or don't, like Have to be mindful of what we wanna actually commit to'cause that's how people burn out. Doing the thing they don't want to do to the goal they may or may not actually want.

3:44:57 I'm aware that the drive to compete can lead me to do things that Are not actually in my best interest. Just because you can win. at a game or think you could win. Doesn't mean you should participate in that game.

3:45:08 That is how you create a life you don't want to live. Yeah. And so Yeah, I don't feel I don't feel rushed. T B D to be continued. So I may we may pick up

3:45:17 Offline. Chatting about that, but let's make sure we talk about a few things. So Two things. So the first is And we don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but spend a little bit of time. Lessons from spending

3:45:29 More than a million dollars on coaching. So I've got All sorts of bullets here. CEO coach, biz coach, boxing coach, therapist, health coach, marketing coach, dating coach, three different ones, Hebrew and now Spanish coach. And the question I want to ask is Related to all these inputs. Because we also talked about

3:45:48 The Top three, bottom three, the weekly, the monthly, the Q one, the this, the that. And What we're talking about is you know I've seen

3:45:56 Many examples of people, including myself. get inundated with inputs. This happens also when people read too many books. Or they have too many advisors for the startup and now they have twenty people they respect or ten people they respect. Even four people they respect, giving them conflicting recommendations. Or it's just too many recommendations.

3:46:14 If you have a hundred nears resolutions, you have no near's resolutions. So the the first thing I'm curious about is like how for yourself do you choose what to act on outside of the business KPIs and stuff, let's just say. Let's break these down.

3:46:30 Let's take my marketing coach. So I work with Moody Glasgow. And Gold messaged him on LinkedIn. Now When you think about coaching, I think instead of having mentors, let's have very specific coaches in very specific areas that I'm weak in.

3:46:43 Or the people around me. We have a lot of coaches for the team. Every almost every single leader in the executive team of Epsom has a coach. And with Moody, it was going to him and saying I'm not as strong on some of the data stuff. I'm not as strong as some of the marketing research stuff and branding stuff. Those are my specific areas of need. And

3:47:00 When we meet, let's really focus on that. Now this is really the Interesting caveat with coaches. You're getting a coach because it's the things you don't want to do.

3:47:08 Or the things you're not aware of. And so you have to be mindful of resistance. The resistance is almost Always the direction I've noticed that that ends up happening. And I just maybe don't always do it right away. So Moody, for instance

3:47:22 is really want to do a lot of surveys. I like Moody, I don't do surveys, man. Just let me go like put up some ads. Let me go do let's do more affiliate marketing. Let's do more video ambassador sponsorship. He's like Who are you doing that for? I don't know, dude, I don't want to do research. Let's let's go do stuff. I'm a doer.

3:47:36 And so his balance of these things is saying Let's go do some research so we know who we're doing it for and be very specific who the customer is. Now you asked. question of inputs. I think the inputs need to tie to your main priorities. That's it. So what is the priorities I'm saying? So within our marketing team right now, it's getting a VP of marketing.

3:47:52 It's just content and it's brand awareness. Also video ambassadors, getting more of those. And so within inputs I'm just like I'm specifically w going over those specific problems and saying.

3:48:02 Walk me through how you're normally thinking about solving this. And then he normally is coaching me and we're having a discussion around it. What I have found with most of the inputs Is that I end up doing'em almost always six months later. Because I resist'em and I'm gonna do what I wanna do anyways. Just like most people here maybe want to start business their way. Then six months later they they think about

3:48:18 The coach. The other thing with him specifically on ticking inputs, I record all my coaching calls, every single one. Every single one. And then I go and listen to them again, not all the time, but selectively, depending on if I'm trying to learn something. Noticing how I'm resisting, noticing where I'm paying attention, and that helps me be able to be a better student with my coach. So in coming back full circle with

3:48:37 Coaching in general. How to choose the input. I think it comes back to my priorities and the specific problems I'm I'm coin to them with. And a lot of times it's then sitting with the answer that they bring back to me. Yeah.

3:48:49 So how has as one example from the bullet list So CEO coach, would that be Dan from Reboot? That's Dan Putt as well as Eamon Al Abdullah. So Dan is more Feelings and then Aemon's more strategic. Okay.

3:49:01 So how Would you describe some of the Benefits from working. With those guys. Just in terms of

3:49:09 Looking in the rear view mirror. coaches I've worked with where it's like, Oh, I picked up the whole body yes from that person. That ended up being really important. And then you give another person, Oh, okay, I took this thing away from them and it was very valuable. What are some of the things you would point to? Let's take Amen Aladilla, for instance. I I'm going over twenty twenty four strategy. And so I talk to customers, I talk to partners, I talk to team.

3:49:32 We look at historically what we've done and we put together a one page or plan. And one of the ideas is we have original products. We basically create affordable low entry versions of popular products. So MailChimp we have an alternative. Calamly, we have an alternative. And I went to him and I said, Hey, we're gonna Let me walk over.

3:49:47 The one thing I'm I'm uncertain of is twenty twenty four and and around what we should do with new products. And Brought it to him. Walked over it and I you know, I'm so convinced that we need to build a bunch of new things. I'm like, dude, this new stuff is gonna be so sick. We're gonna build a loom alternative. We're gonna build this other product alternative, maybe a DocuSign alternative, and he's like

3:50:05 And because I have a mirror, I have him. And I like coaches who've done the things I wanna do. He's ran the business. He's former CEO. He's like, No, what's working in your products that you guys have built? I'm like, Oh, we have this one product, it's crushing it. Okay. So you have a product crushing it. And you want to do a new one. How come?

3:50:20 Oh my god, that's good. We're not doing a new product yet. We're doubling the team so that we can have a core team keep Investing in what's working.

3:50:30 instead of moving off to the new thing. And so that was a really powerful example of him just asking questions based on strategy and and understanding our business. Based on something I was like, Oh, here's my thing here's what I'm thinking, and here's my problem. What should we do next year? And then he's redirected me and I think in a very effective way. So that was one example, we talked about Dan Putt.

3:50:47 Just having an outlet, frankly. You've gone to therapy. We've gone I still go to therapy. So with Dan we were talking on Monday about He was just asking me, How are you feeling about the future? I was like, I feel really Unclear this is what we're talking about. I don't feel like the whole team and myself really

3:51:00 Uh crystal clear and fought what we want to do in Q one. Hm. What do you want to do about that? I'm gonna set up a meeting right now.

3:51:08 For tomorrow. So that we can all be on the same page for Q one and there's scorecards for each of the for the company and then each of the separate teams. And that was from a five minute question with Dan. So it's really just thinking about all these different areas. Like Moody two weeks ago was like No, we're trying to hire VP marketing. That's one of your number one priorities in the marketing team.

3:51:24 And you're not doing shit. And I was like, I know because I'm really busy on the book and my girlfriend. He's like Wow. What do you want to about it? Because that's not moving forward what you said your priority. So I I think a lot of the inputs come back to what I'm bringing to them.

3:51:35 is what I believe is the top problems. And he said What are solutions around it? It's like can you help me do it? He's like, Yeah, actually I'm really good at it. I fire a lot of VPs. He's been a CMO at big companies and so

3:51:44 Now he's spearheading it, and I'm not the bottleneck. Have you Bootstrapped this or have you taken financing for or investment for absolutely. A board. Do you have a board of directors or an advisory board? Maybe I'm mishearing you. No, no, you're hearing me correctly. So maybe taking a step back, how everyone can do this for themselves and copy this is think about what's the weakest part of your business.

3:52:06 And think about who What are the five companies, even three companies that might have the person that you could get to help you with that? And then just go look up those people on LinkedIn. And then offer them a thousand dollars to talk to you for one hour. And that's how we've done.

3:52:18 Okay. All right. So this is a group of people being paid for their time to help give you Various types of strategic. Yeah. And so you can set up different retainer agreements. You don't always have to do a thousand. It could be more, it could be less. So we have a CFO advisor, as I said, for MailChamp. We have a chief people officer from Duolingo. Shout out Christine. Yeah. We have a CR advisor from Outdoorsy. And then on the board, we compensate them as well.

3:52:40 Roger Teach Mukherjee from Indeed because I'm very good at starting businesses and I've struggled now that there's more people. Rajatish runs a two thousand person organization. Yeah. Quick question, just to zoom out though. So because you have CEO coach, but the CEO coach is really two coaches. I have a CEO coach and a business coach. There we go.

3:52:57 And then you have Marketing coach. Marketing coach and then you have the board. So I'm wondering what you get from the board that you don't get from those other things. What I have found most helpful from a board is is one accountability. So it's just like here's what I said I'd do this quarter. Here's how I did.

3:53:11 And then secondly, it's providing an outside opinion of people that are thinking differently than me. So normally every time I go to the board meetings, it's like, Why aren't you growing faster? You're not growing fast enough and then so it's trying to figure out what things we should be doing differently based on the pace that that personally I would like to run the company. But a lot of times almost all the coaches.

3:53:28 are challenging in some capacity. They're finding things that you're not necessarily thinking about or doing. And they bring that to you, even though you may not want to hear it. So let's jump to the f the grand finale. Speaking of accountability. So forty eight hour challenge. Yeah, let's do it.

3:53:41 Me and Tim love People taking action for themselves. And I think I said it Earlier. Is that The reason Tim's audience likes Tim is because you give them things they can get results for themselves with.

3:53:51 And that's why people listen to you. Among other things. I think that's probably one of the top So I want people to take action from this episode. If they've made it this far I want people to see what they can do and how they can change your life for 48 hours.

3:54:02 comes out within forty eight hours of launch. I want to see how people can change your life in either starting a business and if you already have a business, what can you do in your business in 48 hours? And I want you to leave a comment on Tim's blog. And hashtag forty eight hour. Challenge in the comment.

3:54:18 So make sure you're paying attention. So Tim dot blog slash podcast. Find this episode and you're gonna have to do a little work. No Kagan. It's not that hard. Put in the guest name. It'll pop right up. Go to the newest one. Leave a comment with Hashtag. Hashtag 48 hour challenge and what result. have you done in the past 48 hours? What can you do? Maybe you have a certain amount of customers, maybe you have one customer, maybe you posted videos. Ideally, here's what I'm really looking for. I'm looking for the people who are willing to put a little more extra effort.

3:54:44 Like if they've taken and you can follow a million dollar weekend See how far you can go in forty eight hours. And I think there're gonna be some people who are like, I made ten thousand dollars from zero. What's the price? The prize is an all inclusive pay trip.

3:54:56 One day with me, helping you with your business, whether you're starting, whether you're going in Barcelona, Spain, this year. So it will be delivered within six months. So I'll fly you out no matter what country you're in the world. I'll put you up in a hotel and we'll have twenty four hours together. And be able to change their life if they wanna scale their business, if they wanna just go to the beach, we can do that, if they want to do cycling.

3:55:13 But the idea is that If you limit your time w even if you have a growing business, I want people to apply. How far can you go in forty eight hours? What can you do in the equivalent of a weekend, right? Yeah. Which we all have. Forty eight hours. Any other recommendations for people who hear this? They're like, I'm excited, I wanna give it a go. Any other

3:55:30 Specifics. Catalytic. Ideas, anything at all that you'd like to add? to that. So again, folks you're gonna go to Timed up log.

3:55:39 Slash podcast look up Noah Kagan. Go to this episode. There'll be a blog post for it. And then you're leaving a blog comment. With hashtag Forty eight hour challenge. Forty eight hour challenge. If you forget that

3:55:51 There are gonna be probably a lot of comments, so you'll be disqualified if you don't do that. Follow the rules. Any length limits or anything? No, I well speaking of it. I actually just saw this on Facebook. I printed it out for you. Do you remember the Tim Ferris you obviously remember the Tim Ferris experiment. Mm-hmm. This was Cindy.

3:56:09 So Cindy was someone who followed our material from when Tim's show and we followed this process. That's right. And she changed her life in a very short amount of time. Hers was documented, not everyone's was documented. She sent me a video too. Amazing. Oh my god. Blast from the past. So she sent a video.

3:56:27 Where sold out events. So she has a video. So ten years ago, I mentored under Tim Ferris' wing, which was the catalyst to me stepping into the entrepreneurial ship. And I have to say I'm so grateful I did that, I'm so grateful for Tim and Noah because Ever since that day, ten years ago.

3:56:50 I've been able to be the leader I truly want to be. I have my own company now. I have tons of people coming to me for full support that you want to grow and scale their businesses, their companies, uh learning how to build inclusive communities for their brand. And so it's been very fun.

3:57:11 um to how to where like my network has grown. 'Cause like they say your your network is your net worth, right? And so I look back at those moments where I work And like wow, like I have grown

3:57:24 So much. Like literally. And what Tim teaches has has Life long. Um

3:57:33 Lifelong benefits because the way that Tim thinks the way The concepts around, you know, the deal concept. D E A L has definitely um been instilled into my life and so sometimes I think about when I move into the world I'm like hey h well what how would Tim think about this?

3:57:54 'Cause I know that like Being an entrepreneur could be really overwhelming, but the thing that I have learned is that to keep things very simplified and results driven. Um so anyways I'll say thank you again to Tim Ferris. It's definitely been a journey for me. Sometimes not easy, but it's definitely been a very fulfilling journey for myself. And um actually yeah, me and my family just got back from Thailand two months ago. Um

3:58:18 been yeah, like I said, I've just been living the life, so Yeah, thank you. Yeah, but that was someone that you were able I mean you were able to get started for her entrepreneurship trade. We probably had roughly You know, one or two days. I mean it was not a lot of time. And we had we had a little bit of time and it was constantly for a TV show, right? It's like you're stopping, you're starting, you're stopping, you're starting. If you add up the total number of hours, that's wild. That's incredible. Same with Daniel Bliss, who was on your blog when we helped him he was a postal worker. He was actually able to leave to move to Thailand.

3:58:48 Yeah. He was sick, so I wasn't able to get a video, uh, of him talking about some of his results. But I think the reality for everyone out there Yeah, ask for some tactics and tips is y'all have your phones. Y'all have the ability to text, call, go to people in person, see who you have in your network like Cindy. Really like yoga. And just by getting going, maybe yoga's not the million dollar business and maybe she doesn't need a million dollar business, but she got that going. That's a letter now ten years later.

3:59:10 To be able to have her own business. That's wild. I'm just looking at this which I haven't seen. And she sold out. H event. Getting started the original. And I'll just read this because I think it's worth reading, of course. Wow. Well, first of all, congratulations, Cindy. That's so fun. So here's just a portion. The trick I learned while mentoring with Tim and Noah is to keep things as simple as possible, focus on the most leverageable and important thing that would yield the fastest

3:59:35 All caps and best results. So this is after she mentioned she sold out her event. And then she goes, Would I have sold out this event in thirty six hours if I'd used paid ads? No. All Cavs. Would I have sold out this event if I'd gone around to find the nicest, most expensive place to rent? No. L Parentheses I got a free office space instead through a colleague and brought my disco lights. Would I have sold it out

3:59:56 If I just sat in my chair complaining that it w there wasn't enough. Time. No. Would I've sold out if I reached out to people who didn't know me? No. And went on and on and on. And uh That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, that's wow. Ten years later, still going. Good for her. And so it's it's interesting to think for the other people who change their life in forty eight hours from listening to this one episode where they'll be in ten years.

4:00:18 Totally. And it works. People have done it with Past appearances, people have done it with Writing that you've shared on the blog, and now you've encapsulated it all after a lot more experimentation. Many more businesses. Uh many more years. In the books of the book. is Million Dollar Weekend subtitled The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a Seven Figure Business in Forty Eight Hours. People can find that on the website million dollarweekend.com

4:00:44 If people want to interact with you Online. Do you have any preferred? Socials or anything else you'd like to point people to? The website's great. Milliondollweeken.com. You can also look me up, Noah Kagan. I'm that's everywhere. No Kagan everywhere. So Million DollarWeeking.com. And again, if you want to throw your hat in the ring.

4:01:03 And give the forty eight hour challenge a shot. Listen to this episode. Certainly check out the book, but Suppose you don't have to check out the book, right? You just have to do something. And uh hashtag forty eight hour challenge.

4:01:16 In the blog comments on the blog post associated with this episode. Noah. Good endurance. Amazing what ketones will do for your brain. I cheated. But

4:01:30 Thank you for the time. Always great to see you. Great to see you. Congratulations on all the crazy success. I had no idea that it had grown in the way that it's grown. And What fun. Amazing. Barcelona. Life is great. Yeah. But is there anything else you would like to add, Noah, before we land the plane?

4:01:48 I was thinking about how awesome my girlfriend is and one of the message I was thinking for everyone out there is Just a little bit more kindness for ourselves. If everyone can just even today, like give themselves a little bit of kindness, like You know, I came a few minutes late and I was like, Oh, you're late, what are you doing? It's like And I I think for all of us, just a little bit more kindness and uh will make the world a better place for ourselves and for everyone else.

4:02:06 Here, here, that Is Definitely true and also it will just preserve the gas in the tank too. You know, life is short, but life is also long in a lot of ways. So

4:02:20 Spare your calories when you can. Be kind to recharge yourself and others. And you're gonna have off days too. There are days when you're gonna wake up and you know as I've heard said before, it's like if you wake up And you meet an asshole on a given day, that person's an asshole. If you wake up And everyone's an asshole. You might be the asshole. And they're gonna be those days. So just make a little bit of extra effort. Noah, thank you so much. This is fantastic. Check it out, folks. Million dollar weekend. We will put

4:02:48 Links to everything in the show notes, Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Season. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

4:03:08 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts. guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out Just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

4:04:04 Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by 8 Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top, and repeating all of that ad nauseum. But now I am falling asleep in record time. Why? Because I'm using a device that was recommended to me by friends called the Pod Cover by 8 Sleeve. The podcover fits on any mattress and allows you to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment, providing the optimal temperature that gets you the best night's sleep. With the podcover's dual zone temperature control, you and your partner can set your size of the bed to as cool as 55 degrees or as hot as 110 degrees. I think.

4:04:48 Generally in my experience, my partners prefer the high side and I like to sleep. Very, very cool. So stop fighting. This helps. Based on your biometrics, environment, and sleep stages, the podcover makes temperature adjustments throughout the night that limit wake ups and increase your percentage of deep sleep. In addition to its best in class temperature regulation, the podcast sensors also track your health and sleep metrics without the need to use a wearable. Conquer this winter season with the best in sleep tech and sleep at your perfect temperature. Many of my listeners in colder areas, sometimes that's me, enjoy warming up their bed after a freezing day. And if you have a partner, great, you can split the zones and you can sleep at your own ideal. temperatures. It's easy. So go to 8sleep.com slash Tim Spelled out 8Sleep.com slash Tim and save$250 on the pod cover by 8Sleep this winter. 8Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.

4:05:46 This episode is brought to you by Shopify, one of my absolute favorite companies, and they make some of my favorite products. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide, and I've known the team. since 2008 or 2009. But prior to that, I wish I had personally had Shopify in the early 2000s when I was running my own e-commerce business. I tell that story in four-hour work week. But the tools then were absolutely atrocious, and I could only dream of a platform like Shopify. In fact, it was you guys, my dear readers, who introduced me to Shopify when I polled all of you about best e-commerce platforms around 2009, and they've only become better and better since. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or Getting ready for your IPO, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. Doesn't matter if you're selling satin sheets from Shopify's in-person POS system or offering organic olive oil on Shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform. However you interact with your customers, you're covered. And once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers.

4:06:54 Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, and Shopify is truly a global force as the e-commerce solution behind all birds. Rothys, Brooklyn, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across more than 170 countries. Plus, Shopify's award winning help is there to support your success every step of the way if you have questions. This is Possibility Powered by Shopify. So check it out. Sign up for a$1 per month trial period. at Shopify, that's S H O P I F Y, Shopify.com slash Tim, go to Shopify.com slash Tim to take your business to the next level today, one more time. All lowercase, shopify.com slash tip.

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